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CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. PAGK 

Eaely Life 1 

CHAPTER II. 
At Huntingdon — The Unwins 22 

CHAPTER III. 
At Olney — Mr. Newton 35 

CHAPTER IV. 
Authorship — The Moral Satires 47 

CHAPTER V. 
The Task . 60 

CHAPTER VI. 
Short Poems and Translations 81 

CHAPTER Vli. 
The Letters 95 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Close of Life 119 



COWPER. 

CHAPTER I. 

EARLY LIFE. 

CowPER is the most important English poet of the period 
between Pope and the illustrious group headed by Words- 
worth, Byron, and Shelley, which arose out of the intel- 
lectual ferment of the European Revolution. As a re- 
former of poetry, who called it back from conventionality 
to nature, and at the same time as the teacher of a new 
school of sentiment which acted as a solvent upon the 
existing moral and social system, he may perhaps himself 
be numbered among the precursors of the Revolution, 
though he was certainly the mildest of them all. As a 
sentimentalist he presents a faint analogy to Rousseau, 
whom in natural temperament he somewhat resembled. 
He was also the great poet of the religious revival which 
marked the latter part of the eighteenth century in Eng- 
land, and which was called Evangelicism within the estab- 
lishment, and Methodism without. In this way he is as- 
sociated with Wesley and Whitefield, as well as with the 
philanthropists of the movement, such as Wilberforce, 
Thornton, and Clarkson. As a poet he touches, on dif- 
ferent sides of his character, Goldsmith, Crabbe, and 



2 COWPER. [chap. 

Burns. With Goldsmith and Crabbe he shares the hon- 
our of improving English taste in the sense of truthful- 
ness and simplicity. To Burns he felt his affinity, across 
a gulf of social circumstance, and in spite of a dialect not 
yet made fashionable by Scott. Besides his poetry, he 
holds a high, perhaps the highest place, among English 
letter-writers ; and the collection of his letters appended 
to Southey's biography forms, with the biographical por- 
tions of his poetry, the materials for a sketch of his life. 
Southey's biography itself is very helpful, though too 
prolix and too much filled out with dissertations for com- 
mon readers. Had its author only done for Cowper what 
he did for Nelson !' 

William Cowper came of the Whig nobility of the robe. 
His great-uncle, after whom he was named, was the Whig 
Lord Chancellor of Anne and George I. His grandfather 
was that Spencer Cowper, judge of the Common Pleas, 
for love of whom the pretty Quakeress drowned herself, 
and who, by the rancour of party, was indicted for her 
murder. His father, the Rev. John Cowper, D.D., was 
chaplain to George H. His mother was a Donne, of the 
race of the ppet, and descended by several lines from 
Henry HI. A Whig and a gentleman he was by birth, 
a Whig and a gentleman he remained to the end. He 
was born on the 15th November (old style), 1731, in his 
father's rectory of Berkhampstead. From nature he re- 
ceived, with a large measure of the gifts of genius, a still 
larger measure of its painful sensibilities. In his portrait 
by Romney the brow bespeaks intellect, the features feel- 
ing and refinement, the eye madness. The stronger parts 
of character, the combative and propelling forces, he evi- 

' Our acknowledgments are also due to Mr. Benham, the writer 
of the Memoir prefixed to the Globe Edition of Cowper. 



I.] EARLY LIFE. 3 

dently lacked from the beginnino-. For tlie battle of life 
he was totally unfit. His judgment in its healthy state 
was, even on practical questions, sound enough, as his let- 
ters abundantly prove ; but his sensibility not only ren- 
dered him incapable of wrestling with a rough world, but 
kept him always on the verge of madness, and frequently 
plunged him into it. To the malady which threw hira 
out of active life we owe not the meanest of English 
poets. 

At the age of thirty-two, writing of himself, he says, " I 
am of a very singular temper, and very unlike all the men 
that I have ever conversed with. Certainly I am not an 
absolute fool, but I have more weakness than the greatest 
of all the fools I can recollect at present. In short, if I 
was as fit for the next world as I am unfit for this — and 
God forbid I should speak it in vanity — I would not 
change conditions with any saint in Christendom." Folly 
produces nothing good, and if Cowper had been an abso- 
lute fool, he would not have written good poetry. But he 
does not exaggerate his own weakness, and that he should 
have become a power among men is a remarkable triumph 
of the influences which have given birth to Christian civil- 
ization. 

The world into which the child came was one very ad- 
verse to him, and at the same time very much in need of 
him. It was a world from which the spirit of poetry 
seemed to have fled. There could be no stronger proof 
of this than the occupation of the throne of Spenser, 
Shakspeare, and Milton by the arch-versifier Pope. The 
Revolution of 1688 was glorious, but unlike the Puritan 
Revolution which it followed, and in the political sphere 
partly ratified, it was profoundly prosaic. Spiritual relig- 
ion, the source of Puritan grandeur and of the poetry of 



4 COWPER. [chap. 

Milton, was almost extinct; there was not ranch more of 
it among the Nonconformists, who had now become to a 
great extent mere Whigs, with a decided Unitarian ten- 
dency. The Church was little better than a political 
force, cultivated and manipulated by political leaders for 
their own purposes. The Bishops were either politicians 
or theological polemics collecting trophies of victory over 
free-thinkers as titles to higher preferment. The inferior 
clergy, as a body, were far nearer in character to TruUiber 
than to Dr. Primrose ; coarse, sordid, neglectful of their 
duties, shamelessly addicted to sinecurism and pluralities, 
fanatics in their Toryism and in attachment to their cor- 
porate privileges, cold, rationalistic and almost heathen in 
their preachings, if they preached at all. The society of 
the day is mirrored in the pictures of Hogarth, in the 
works of Fielding and Smollett ; hard and heartless polish 
was the best of it ; and not a little of it was Marriage a 
la Mode. Chesterfield, with his soulless culture, his court 
graces, and his fashionable immoralities, was about the 
highest type of an English gentleman ; but the Wilkeses, 
Potters, and Sandwiches, whose mania for vice culminated 
in the Hell-fire Club, were more numerous than the Ches- 
terfields. Among the country squires, for one Allworthy 
or Sir Roger de Coverley there were many Westerns. 
Among the common people religion was almost extinct, 
and assuredly no new morality or sentiment, such as Posi- 
tivists now promise, had taken its place. Sometimes the 
rustic thought for himself, and scepticism took formal pos- 
session of his mind ; but, as we see from one of Cowper's 
letters, it was a coarse scepticism which desired to be bur- 
ied with its hounds. Ignorance and brutality reigned in 
the cottage. Drunkenness reigned in palace and cottage 
alike. Gambling, cock-fighting, and bull-fighting were the 



1.] EARLY LIFE. 6 

amusements of the people. Political life, which, if it had 
been pure and vigorous, might have made up for the ab- 
sence of spiritual influences, was corrupt from the top of 
the scale to the bottom : its effect on national character is 
pourtrayed in Hogarth's Election. That property had its 
duties as well as its rights, nobody had yet ventured to 
say or think. The duty of a gentleman towards his own 
class was to pay his debts of honour and to fight a duel 
whenever he was challenged by one of his own order ; to- 
wards the lower class his duty was none. Though the 
forms of government were elective, and Cowper gives us 
a description of the candidate at election-time obsequious- 
ly soliciting votes, society was intensely aristocratic, and 
each rank was divided from that below it by a sharp line 
which precluded brotherhood or sympathy. Says the 
Duchess of Buckingham to Lady Huntingdon, who had 
asked her to come and hear Whitefield, " I thank your 
ladyship for the information concerning the Methodist 
preachers ; their doctrines are most repulsive, and strong- 
ly tinctured with disrespect towards their superiors, in pei- 
petually endeavouring to level all ranks and do away with 
aH distinctions. It is monstrous to be told you have a 
heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl on the 
earth. This is highly offensive and insulting ; and I can- 
not but wonder that your ladyship should relish any senti- 
ments so much at variance with high rank and good breed- 
ing. I shall be most happy to come and hear your favour- 
ite preacher." Her Grace's sentiments towards the com- 
mon wretches that crawl on the earth were shared, we may 
be sure, by her Grace's waiting-maid. Of humanity there 
was as little as there was of religion. It was the age of 
the criminal law which hanged men for petty thefts, of 
life-long imprisonment for debt, of the stocks and the pil- 



6 COWrER. [chap. 

lory, of a Temple Bar garnished with the heads of traitors, 
of the unreformed prison system, of the press-gang, of unre- 
strained tyranny and savagery at public schools. That the 
slave-trade was iniquitous, hardly any one suspected ; even 
men who deemed themselves religious took part in it with- 
out scruple. But a change was at hand, and a still mighti- 
er change was in prospect. At the time of Cowper's birth, 
John Wesley was twenty-eight, and Whitefield was seven- 
teen. With them the revival of religion was at hand. John- 
son, the moral reformer, was twenty-two. Howard was born, 
and in less than a generation Wilberforce was to come. 

When Cowper was six years old his mother died ; and 
seldom has a child, even such a child, lost more, even in a 
mother. Fifty years after her death he still thinks of her, 
he saysj with love and tenderness every day. Late in his 
life his cousin, Mrs. Anne Bodham, recalled herself to his 
remembrance by sending him his mother's picture. " Ev- 
ery creature," he writes, " that has any affinity to my moth- 
er is dear to me, and you, the daughter of her brother, are 
but one remove distant from her; I love you therefore, and 
love you much, both for her sake and for your own. The 
world could not have furnished you with a present so ac- 
ceptable to me as the picture which you have so kindly 
sent me. I received it the night before last, and received 
it with a trepidation of nerves and spirits somewhat akin 
to what I should have felt had its dear original presented 
herself to my embraces. I kissed it, and hung it where it 
is the last object which I see at night, and the first on 
which I open my eyes in the morning. She died when 
I completed ray sixth year; yet I remember her well, 
and am an ocular witness of the great fidelity of the copy. 
I remember, too, a multitude of the maternal tendernesses 
which I received from her, and which have endeared her 



i] EARLY LIFE. 1 

memory to me beyond expression. There is in me, I be- 
lieve, more of the Donne than of the Cowper, and though 
I love all of both names, and have a thousand reasons to 
love those of my own name, yet I feel the bond of nature 
draw me vehemently to your side." As Cowper never 
married, there was nothing to take the place in his heart 
which had been left vacant by his mother. 

" My mother ! when I learn'd that thou wast dead, 
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed ? 
Hover'd thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son, 
Wretch even then, life's journey just begun ? 
Perhaps thou gav'st me, though unfelt, a kiss ; 
Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss — 
Ah, that maternal smile ! — it answers — Yes. 
I heard the bell toll'd on thy bitrial day, 
I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away. 
And, turning from my nursery window, drew 
A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu ! 
But was it such ? — It was. — Where thou art goue 
Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown. 
May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore. 
The parting word shall pass my lips no more ! 
Thy maidens, grieved themselves at my concern. 
Oft gave me promise of thy quick return. 
What ardently I wish'd, I long believed. 
And disappointed still, was still deceived ; 
By expectation every day beguiled, 
Dupe of to-morrow even from a child. 
Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went, 
Till, all my stock of infant sorrows spent, 
I learn'd at last submission to my lot. 
But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot." 

In the years that followed no doubt he remembered her 
too well. At six years of age this little mass of timid and 



8 COWPER. [chap. 

quivering sensibility was, in accordance with the cruel cus- 
tom of the time, sent to a large boarding - school. The 
change from home to a boarding-school is bad enough 
now ; it was much worse in those days. 

" I had hardships," says Cowper, " of various kinds to 
conflict with, which I felt more sensibly in proportion to 
the tenderness with which I had been treated at home. 
But my chief affliction consisted in my being singled out 
from all the other boys by a lad of about fifteen years of 
age as a proper object upon whom he might let loose the 
cruelty of his temper. I choose to conceal a particular 
recital of the many acts of barbarity with which he made 
it his business continually to persecute me. It will be suf- 
ficient to say that his savage treatment of me impressed 
such a dread of his figure upon my mind, that I well re- 
member being afraid to lift my eyes upon him higher than 
to his kneCvS, and that I knew him better by his shoe-buc- 
kles than by any other part of his dress. May the Lord 
pardon him, and may we meet in glory !" Cowper charges 
himself, it may be in the exaggerated style of a self-accus- 
ing saint, with having become at school an adept in the 
art of lying. Southey says this must be a mistake, since 
at English public schools boys do not learn to lie. But 
the mistake is on Southey' s part ; bullying, such as this 
child endured, while it makes the strong boyo tyrants, 
makes the weak boys cowards, and teaches them to defend 
themselves by deceit, the fist of the weak. The recollec- 
tion of this boarding-school mainly it was that at a later 
day inspired the plea for a home education in Tirocinium. 

" Then why resign into a stranger's hand 
A task as mucli within your own command, 
That God and nature, and your interest too, 
Seem with one voice to delegate to you ? 



I.] EARLY LIFE. 9 

Why hire a lodging in a house unknown 

For one whose tenderest thoughts all hover round your 

own? 
This second weaning, needless as it is, 
How does it lacerate both your heart and his ! 
The indented stick that loses day by day 
Notch after notch, till all are smooth'd away, 
Bears witness long ere his dismission come. 
With what intense desire he wants his home. 
But though the joys he hopes beneath your roof 
Bid fair enough to answer in the proof, 
Harmless, and safe, and natural as they are, 
A disappointment waits him even there : 
Arrived, he feels an unexpected change. 
He blushes, hangs his head, is shy and strange. 
No longer takes, as once, with fearless ease. 
His favourite stand between his father's knees, 
But seeks the corner of some distant seat. 
And eyes the door, and watches a retreat, 
And, least familiar where he should be most, 
Feels all his happiest privileges lost. 
Alas, poor boy ! — the natural effect 
Of love by absence chilFd into respect." 

From the boarding-school, the boy, his eyes being liable 
to inflammation, was sent to live with an oculist, in whose 
house he spent two years, enjoying at all events a respite 
from the sufferings and the evils of the boarding-school. 
He was then sent to Westminster School, at that time in 
its glory. That Westminster in those days must have 
been a scene not merely of hardship, but of cruel suffer- 
ing and degradation to the younger and weaker boys, has 
been proved by the researches of the Public Schools Com- 
mission. There was an established system and a regular 
vocabulary of bullying. Yet Cowper seems not to have 



10 COWPER. [chap. 

been so unhappy there as at the private school ; he speaks 
of himself as having excelled at cricket and football ; and 
excellence in cricket and football at a public school gen- 
erally carries with it, besides health and enjoyment, not 
merely immunity from bullying, but high social consider- 
ation. With all Cowper's delicacy and sensitiveness, he 
must have had a certain fund of physical strength, or he 
could hardly have borne the literary labour of his later 
years, especially as he was subject to the medical treat- 
ment of a worse than empirical era. At one time he says, 
while he was at Westminster, his spirits were so buoyant 
that he fancied he should never die, till a skull thrown out 
before him by a grave-digger as he was passing through 
St. Margaret's churchyard in the night recalled him to a 
sense of his mortality. 

The instruction at a public school in those days was 
exclusively classical. Cowper was under Vincent Bourne, 
his portrait of whom is in some respects a picture not 
only of its immediate subject, but of the school-master of 
the last century. " I love the memory of Vinny Bourne. 
I think him a better Latin poet than Tibullus, Propertius, 
Ausonius, or any of the writers in his way, except Ovid, 
and not at all inferior to him. I love him too with a love 
of partiality, because he was usher of the fifth form at 
Westminster when I passed through it. He was so good- 
natured and so indolent that I lost more than I got by him^ 
for he made me as idle as himself. He was such a sloven^ 
as if he had trusted to his genius as a cloak for every- 
thing that could disgust you in his person ; and indeed in 
his writings he has almost made amends for all. ... I re- 
member seeing the Duke of Richmond set fire to his 
greasy locks, and box his ears to put it out again." Cow- 
per learned, if not to write Latin verses as well as Vinny 



I.] EARLY LIFE. 11 

Bourne himself, to write them very well, as his Latin ver- 
sions of some of his own short poems bear witness. Not 
only so, but he evidently became a good classical scholar, 
as classical scholarship was in those days, and acquired 
the literary form of which the classics are the best school. 
Out of school hours he studied independently, as clever 
boys under the unexacting rule of the old public schools 
often did, and read through the whole of the Iliad and 
Odyssey with a friend. He also, probably, picked up at 
Westminster much of the little knowledge of the world 
which he ever possessed. Among his school-fellows was 
Warren Hastings, in whose guilt as proconsul he after- 
wards, for the sake of Auld Lang Syne, refused to believe, 
and Impey, whose character has had the ill-fortune to be 
required as the shade in Macaulay's fancy picture of Hast- 
ings. 

On leaving Westminster, Cowper, at eighteen, went to 
live with Mr. Chapman, an attorney, to whom he was arti- 
cled, being destined for the Law. He chose that profes- 
sion, he says, not of his own accord, but to gratify an in- 
dulgent father, who may have been led into the error by a 
recollection of the legal honours of the family, as well as 
by the " silver pence " which his promising son had won 
by his Latin verses at Westminster School. The youth 
duly slept at the attorney's house in Ely Place. His 
days were spent in " giggling and making giggle " with 
his cousins, Theodora and Harriet, the daughters of Ash- 
ley Cowper, in the neighbouring Southampton Row. Ash- 
ley Cowper was a very little man, in a white hat lined with 
yellow, and his nephew used to say that he would one day 
be picked by mistake for a mushroom. His fellow-clerk 
in the office, and his accomplice in giggling and making 
giggle, was one strangely mated with him ; the strong, as- 
B 



12 COWPER. [chap. 

piring, and unscrupulous Thurlow, who, though fond of 
pleasure, was at the same time preparing himself to push 
his way to wealth and power. Cowper felt that Thurlow 
would reach the summit of ambition, while he would him- 
self remain below, and made his friend promise when he 
was Chancellor to give him something. When Thurlow 
was Chancellor, he gave Cowper his advice on translating 
Homer. 

At the end of his three years with the attorney, Cowper 
took chambers in the Middle, from which he afterwards 
removed to the Inner Temple. The Temple is now a pile 
of law offices. In those days it was still a Society. One 
of Cowper's set says of it : " The Temple is the barrier 
that divides the City and Suburbs; and the gentlemen 
who reside there seem influenced by the situation of the 
place they inhabit. Templars are in general a kind of 
citizen courtiers. They aim at the air and the mien of 
the drawing-room ; but the holy-day smoothness of a 
'prentice, heightened with some additional touches of the 
rake or coxcomb, betrays itself in everything they do. 
The Temple, however, is stocked with its peculiar beaux, 
wits, poets, critics, and every character in the gay world ; 
and it is a thousand pities that so pretty a society should 
be disgraced with a few dull fellows, who can submit to 
puzzle themselves with cases and reports, and have not 
taste enough to follow the genteel method of studying the 
law." Cowper, at all events, studied law by the genteel 
method; he read it almost as little in the Temple as he 
had in the attorney's office, though in due course of time 
he was formally called to the Bar, and even managed in 
some way to acquire a reputation which, when he had en- 
tirely given up the profession, brought him a curious offer 
of a readership at Lyons Inn. His time was given to lit- 



I.] EARLY LIFE. 13 

eratiire, and he became a member of a little circle of men 
of letters and journalists which had its social centre in the 
Nonsense Club, consisting of seven Westminster men who 
dined together every Thursday. In the set were Bounell 
Thornton and Colman, twin wits ; fellow-writers of the pe- 
riodical essays which were the rage in that day ; joint pro- 
prietors of the St. Jameses Chronicle; contributors both of 
them to the Connoisseur ; and translators, Colman of Ter- 
ence, Bonnell Thornton of Plautus, Colman being a drama- 
tist besides. In the set was Lloyd, another wit and essay- 
ist and a poet, with a character not of the best. On the 
edge of the set, but apparently not in it, was Churchill, 
who was then running a course which to many seemed 
meteoric, and of whose verse, sometimes strong but always 
turbid, Cowper conceived and retained an extravagant ad- 
miration. Churchill was a link to Wilkes ; Hogarth, too, 
was an ally of Colman, and helped him in his exhibition 
of Signs. The set was strictly confined to Westminsters. 
Gray and Mason, being Etonians, were objects of its litera- 
ry hostility, and butts of its satire. It is needless to say 
much about these literary companions of Cowper's youth ; 
his intercourse with them was totally broken off; and be- 
fore he himself became a poet its effects had been obliter- 
ated by madness, entire change of mind, and the lapse of 
twenty years. If a trace remained, it was in his admira- 
tion of Churchill's verses, and in the general results of lit- 
erary society, and of early practice in composition. Cow- 
per contributed to the Connoisseur and the *S'^. James's 
Chronicle. His papers in the Connoisseur have been pre- 
served ; they are mainly imitations of the lighter papers 
of the Spectator by a student who affects the man of the 
world. lie also dallied with poetry, writing verses to 
" Delia," and an epistle to Lloyd. He had translated an 



14 COWPER. [chap. 

elegy of Tibullus when he was fourteen, and at Westmin- 
ster he had written an imitation of PhiUips's Splendid 
Shilling, which, Southey says, shows his manner formed. 
He helped his Cambridge brother, John Cowper, in a 
translation of the Henriade. He kept up his classics, es- 
pecially his Homer. In his letters there are proofs of his 
familiarity with Rousseau. Two or three ballads which 
he wrote are lost, but he says they were popular, and we 
may believe him. Probably they were patriotic. " When 
poor Bob White," he says, " brought in the news of Bos- 
cawen's success off the coast of Portugal, how did I leap 
for joy ! When Hawke demolished Conflans, I was still 
more transported. But nothing could express my rapture 
when Wolfe made the conquest of Quebec." 

The "Delia" to whom Cowper wrote verses was his 
cousin Theodora, with whom he had an unfortunate love 
affair. Her father, Ashley Cowper, forbade their mar- 
riage, nominally on the ground of consanguinity ; really, 
as Southey thinks, because he saw Cowper's unfitness for 
business, and inability to maintain a wife. Cowper felt 
the disappointment deeply at the time, as well he might 
do if Theodora resembled her sister. Lady Hesketh. The- 
odora remained unmarried, and, as we shall see, did not 
forget her lover. His letters she preserved till her death 
in extreme old age. 

In 1756 Cowper's father died. There does not seem to 
have been much intercourse between them, nor does the 
son in after-years speak with any deep feeling of his loss : 
possibly his complaint in Tirocinium of the effect of board- 
ing-schools, in estranging children from their parents, may 
have had some reference to his own case. His local affec- 
tions, however, were very strong, and he felt with unusual 
keenness the final parting from his old home, and the pang 



I.] EARLY LIFE. 15 

of thinking tbat strangers usurp our dwelling and the fa- 
miliar places will know us no more. 

" Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more^ 
Children not thine have trod my nursery floor; 
And where the gardener Robin, day by day, 
Drew me to school along the public way, 
Delighted with my bauble coach, and wrapp'd 
In scarlet mantle warm and velvet capp'd. 
'Tis now become a history little known, 
That once we calFd the pastoral house our own.'^ 

Before the rector's death, it seems, his pen had hardly 
realized the cruel frailty of the tenure by which a home in 
a parsonage is held. Of the family of Burkhampstead 
Rectory there was now left besides himself only his broth- 
er John Cowper, Fellow of Caius College, Cambridge, whose 
birth had cost their mother's life. 

When Cowper was thirty -two, and still living in the 
Temple, came the sad and decisive crisis of his life. He 
went mad, and attempted suicide. What was the source of 
his madness ? There is a vague tradition that it arose from 
licentiousness, which, no doubt, is sometimes the cause of 
insanity. But in Cowper's case there is no proof of any- 
thing of the kind : his confessions, after his conversion, of 
his own past sinfulness point to nothing worse than gen^ 
eral ungodliness and occasional excess in wine ; and the tra- 
dition derives a colour of probability only from the loose 
lives of one or two of the wits and Bohemians with whom 
he had lived. His virtuous love of Theodora was scarce- 
ly compatible with low and gross amours. Generally, his 
madness is said to have been religious, and the blame is 
laid on the same foe to human weal as that of the sacrifice 
of Iphigenia. But when he first went mad, his conversion 



10 COWPER. [chap. 

to Evangelicism had not taken place ; he had not led a par- 
ticularly religious life, nor been greatly given to religious 
practices, though as a clergyman's son he naturally be- 
lieved in religion, had at times felt religious emotions, 
and when he found his heart sinking had tried devotional 

! books and prayers. The truth is, his malady was simple 
hypochondria, having its source in delicacy of constitution 
and weakness of digestion, combined with the influence of 
melancholy surroundings. It had begun to attack him 
soon after his settlement in his lonely chambers in the 
Temple, when his pursuits and associations, as we have 
seen, were far from Evangelical. When its crisis arrived, 
he was living by himself without any society of the kind 
that suited him (for the excitement of the Nonsense Club 
\ was sure to be followed by reaction) ; he had lost his love, 
\ his father, his home, and, as it happened, also a dear friend ; 
• his little patrimony was fast dwindling away; he must 
have despaired of success in his profession ; and his out- 
look was altogether dark. It yielded to the remedies to 
which hypochondria usually yields — air, exercise, sunshine, 
cheerful society, congenial occupation. It came with Jan- 
nary and went with May. Its gathering gloom was dis- 
pelled for a time by a stroll in fine weather on the hills 
above Southampton Water, and Cowper said that he was 
never unhappy for a whole day in the company of Lady 
Hesketh. When he had become a Methodist, his hypo- 
chondria took a religious form, but so did his recovery 
from hypochondria; both must be set down to the ac- 
count of his faith, or neither. This double aspect of the 
matter will plainly appear further on. A votary of wealth, 
when his brain gives way under disease or age, fancies 
that he is a beggar. A Methodist, when his brain gives 
way under the same influences, fancies that he is for- 



1.] EARLY LIFE. 17 

saten of God. In both cases the root of the malady is 
physical. 

In the lines which Cowper sent on his disappointment 
to Theodora's sister, and which record the sources of his 
despondency, there is not a touch of religious despair, or 
of anything connected with religion. The catastrophe was 
brought on by an incident with which religion had noth- 
ing to do. The office of clerk of the Journals in the House 
of Lords fell vacant, and was in the gift of Cowper's kins- 
man. Major Cowper, as patentee. Cowper received the 
nomination. He had longed for the office sinfully, as he 
afterwards fancied ; it would exactly have suited him, and 
made him comfortable for life. But his mind had by this 
time succumbed to his malady. His fancy conjured up 
visions of opposition to the appointment in the House of 
Lords ; of hostility in the office where he had to study the 
Journals; of the terrors of an examination to be under- 
gone before the frowning peers. After hopelessly poring 
over the Journals for some months he became quite mad, 
and his madness took a suicidal form. He has told with 
unsparing exactness the story of his attempts to kill him- 
self. In his youth his father had unwisely given him a 
treatise in favour of suicide to read, and when he argued 
against it, had listened to his reasonings in a silence which 
he construed as sympathy with the writer, though it seems 
to have been only unwillingness to think too badly of the 
state of a departed friend. This now recurred to his mind, 
and talk with casual companions in taverns and chop- 
houses was enough in his present condition to confirm him 
in his belief that self-destruction was lawful. Evidently 
he was perfectly insane, for he could not take up a news- 
paper without reading in it a fancied libel on himself. 
First he bought laudanum, and had gone out into the 



18 COWPER. [chap. 

fields with the intention of swallowing it, when the love of 
life suggested another way of escaping the dreadful ordeal. 
He might sell all he had, fly to France, change his religion, 
and bury himself in a monastery. He went home to pack 
up ; but while he was looking over his portmanteau, his 
mood changed, and he again resolved on self-destruction. 
Taking a coach, he ordered the coachman to drive to the 
Tower Wharf, intending to throw himself into the river. 
But the love of life once more interposed, under the guise 
of a low tide and a porter seated on the quay. Again in 
the coach, and afterwards in his chambers, he tried to swal- 
low the laudanum; but his hand was paralysed by "the 
convincing Spirit," aid6d by seasonable interruptions from 
the presence of his laundress and her husband, and at 
length he threw the laudanum away. On the night before 
the day appointed for the examination before the Lords, 
he lay some time with the point of his penknife pressed 
against his heart, but without courage to drive it home. 
Lastly, he tried to hang himself; and on this occasion he 
seems to have been saved not by the love of life, or by 
want of resolution, but by mere accident. He had become 
insensible, when the garter by which he was suspended 
broke, and his fall brought in the laundress, who supposed 
him to be in a fit. He sent her to a friend, to whom he 
related all that had passed, and despatched him to his kins- 
man. His kinsman arrived, listened with horror to the 
story, made more vivid by the sight of the broken garter, 
saw at once that all thought of the appointment was at 
end, and carried away the instrument of nomination. Let 
those whom despondency assails read this passage of Cow- 
per's life, and remember that he lived to write John Gil- 
phi and The 7' ask. 

Cowper tells us that "to this moment he had felt no 



I.] EARLY LIFE. 19 

concern of a spiritual kind ;" that " ignorant of original 
sin, insensible of tlie guilt of actual transgression, he un- 
derstood neither the Law nor the Gospel ; the condem- 
ning nature of the one, nor thie restoring mercies of the 
other." But after attempting suicide he was seized, as he 
well might be, with religious horrors. Now it was that he 
began to ask himself whether he had been guilty of the 
unpardonable sin, and was presently persuaded that he 
had, though it would be vain to inquire what he imagined 
the unpardonable sin to be. In this mood, he fancied that 
if there was any balm for him in Gilead, it would be found 
in the ministrations of his friend Martin Madan, an Evan- 
gelical clergyman of high repute, whom he had been wont 
to regard as an enthusiast. His Cambridge brother, John, 
the translator of the He nriade, seems to have had some phil- 
osophic doubts as to the efficacy of the proposed remedy ; 
but, like a philosopher, he consented to the experiment. 
Mr. Madan came and ministered, but in that distempered 
soul his balm turned to poison ; his religious conversations 
only fed the horrible illusion. A set of English Sapphics, 
written by Cowper at this time, and expressing his despair, 
were unfortunately preserved ; they are a ghastly play of 
the poetic faculty in a mind utterly deprived of self-con- 
trol, and amidst the horrors of inrushing madness. Dia- 
bolical they might be termed more truly than religious. 
A There was nothing for it but a madhouse. The sufferer 
was consigned to the private asylum of Dr. Cotton, at St. 
Alban's. An ill-chosen physician Dr. Cotton would have 
been, if the malady had really had its source in religion ; 
for he was himself a pious man, a writer of hymns, and 
was in the habit of holding religious intercourse with his 
patients. Cowper^ after his recovery, speaks of that inter- 
course with the keenest pleasure and gratitude ; so that, 
2 



20 COWPER. [chap. 

in the opinion of the two persons best qualified to judge, 
religion in this case was not the bane. Cowper has given 
us a full account of his recovery. It was brought about, 
as we can plainly see, by medical treatment wisely applied ; 
but it came in the form of a burst of religious faith and 
hope. He rises one morning feeling better ; grows cheer- 
ful over his breakfast, takes up the Bible, which in his 
fits of madness he always threw aside, and turns to a verse 
in the Epistle to the Romans. "Immediately I received 
strength to believe, and the full beams of the Sun of 
Righteousness shone upon me. I saw the sufficiency of 
the atonement He had made, my pardon in His blood, and 
the fulness and completeness of His justification. In a 
moment I believed and received the Gospel." Cotton at 
first mistrusted the sudden change ; but he was at length 
satisfied, pronounced his patient cured, and discharged him 
from the asylum, after a detention of eighteen months. 
Cowper hymned his deliverance in The Happy Change^ as 
in the hideous Sapphics he had given religious utterance 
to his despair. 

" The soul, a dreary province once 
Of Satan's dark domain, 
Feels a new empire form'd within, 
And owns a heavenly reign. 

" The glorious orb whose golden beams 
The fruitful year control, 
Since first obedient to Thy word, 
He started frofa the goal, 

" Has cheer'd the nations with the joya 
His orient rays impart ; 
But, Jesus, 'tis Thy light alone 
Can shine upon the heart." 



I.] EARLY LIFE. 21 

Once for all, the reader of Cowper's life must make up 
his mind to acquiesce in religious forms of expression. If 
he does not sympathize with them, he will recognize them 
as phenomena of opinion, and bear them like a philosopher. 
He can easily translate them into the language of psychol- 
ogy, or even of physiology, if he thinks fit. 



CHAPTER 11. 

AT HUNTINGDON THE UNWINS. 

The storm was over ; but it had swept away a great part 
of Cowper's scanty fortune, and almost all his friends. At 
thirty-five he was stranded and desolate. He was obliged 
to resign a Commissionership of Bankruptcy which he held, 
and little seems to have remained to him but the rent of 
his chambers in the Temple. A return to his profession 
was, of course, out of the question. His relations, how- 
ever, combined to make up a little income for him, though 
from a hope of his family, he had become a melancholy 
disappointment; even the Major contributing, in spite of 
the rather trying incident of the nomination. His brother 
was kind, and did a brother's duty, but there does not seem 
to have been much sympathy between them ; John Cow- 
per did not become a convert to Evangelical doctrine till 
he was near his end, and he was incapable of sharing Wil- 
liam's spiritual emotions. Of his brilliant companions, the 
Bonnell Thorntons and the Colmans, the quondam mem- 
bers of the Nonsense Club, he heard no more, till he had 
himself become famous. But he still had a staunch friend 
in a less brilliant member of the club, Joseph Hill, the law- 
yer, evidently a man who united strong sense and depth of 
character with literary tastes and love of fun, and who was 
throughout Cowper's life his Mentor in matters of busi- 



CHAP. II.] AT HUNTINGDON— THE UNWINS. 23 

ness, Avith regard to which he was himself a child. He 
had brought with him from the asylum at St. Alban's the 
servant who had attended him there, and who had been 
drawn by the singular talisman of personal attraction which 
partly made up to this frail and helpless being for his en- 
tire lack of force. He had also brought from the same 
place an outcast boy wdiose case had excited his interest, 
and for whom he afterwards provided by putting him to a 
trade. The maintenance of these two retainers was expen- 
sive, and led to grumbling among the subscribers to the 
family subsidy, the Major especially threatening to with- 
draw his contribution. While the matter was in agitation, 
Cowper received an anonymous letter couched in the kind- 
est terms, bidding him not distress himself, for that what- 
ever deduction from his income might be made, the loss 
would be supplied by one who loved him tenderly and ap- 
proved his conduct. In a letter to Lady Hesketh, he says 
that he wishes he knew who dictated this letter, and that 
he had seen not long before a style excessively like it. 
He can scarcely have failed to guess that it came from 
Theodora. 

It is due to Cowper to say that he accepts the assistance 
of his relatives, and all acts of kindness done to him, with 
sweet and becoming thankfulness ; and that whatever dark 
fancies he may have had about his religious state, when 
the evil spirit was upon him, he always speaks with con- 
tentment and cheerfulness of his earthly lot. Nothing 
splenetic, no element of suspicious and irritable self-love 
entered into the composition of his character. 

On his release from the asylum he was taken in hand 
by his brother John, who first tried to find lodgings for 
him at or near Cambridge, and, failing in this, placed him 
at Huntingdon, within a long ride, so that William becom- 



24 COWPER. [chap. 

ing a horseman for the purpose, the brothers could meet 
once a week. Huntingdon was a quiet little town with 
less than two thousand inhabitants, in a dull country, the 
best part of which was the Ouse, especially to Cowper, 
who was fond of bathing. Life there, as in other English 
country towns in those days, and, indeed, till railroads made 
people everywhere too restless and migratory for compan- 
ionship, or even for acquaintance, was sociable in an unre- 
fined way. There were assemblies, dances, races, card-parties, 
and a bowling-green, at which the little world met and en- 
joyed itself. From these the new convert, in his spiritual 
ecstasy, of course turned away as mere modes of murdering 
time. Three families received him with civility, two of 
them with cordiality ; but the chief acquaintances he made 
were with "odd scrambling fellows like himself;" an. ec- 
centric water-drinker and vegetarian who was to be met 
by early risers and walkers every morning at six o'clock 
by his favourite spring; a char-parson, of the class com- 
mon in those days of sinecurism and non-residence, who 
walked sixteen miles every Sunday to serve two churches, 
besides reading daily prayers at Huntingdon, and who re- 
galed his friend with ale brewed by his own hands. In 
his attached servant the recluse boasted that he had a 
friend ; a friend he might have, but hardly a companion. 

For the first days, and even weeks, however, Huntingdon 
seemed a paradise. The heart of its new inhabitant was 
I full of the unspeakable happiness that comes with calm 
( after storm, with health after the most terrible of mala- 
i dies, with repose after the burning fever of the brain, 
f When first he went to church, he was in a spiritual ec- 
stasy ; it was with difficulty that he restrained his emo- 
tions ; though his voice was silent, being stopped by the 
intensity of his feelings, his heart within him sang for joy ; 



II.] AT HUNTINGDON— THE UNWINS. 25 

and when the Gospel for the day was read, the sound of it 
was more than he could well bear. This brightness of his 
mind communicated itself to all the objects round him — 
to the sluggish waters of the Ouse, to dull, fenny Hunting- 
don, and to its commonplace inhabitants. 

For about three months his cheerfulness lasted, and 
with the help of books, and his rides to meet his brother, 
he got on pretty well ; but then " the communion which 
he had so long been able to maintain with the Lord was 
suddenly interrupted." This is his theological version of 
the case ; the rationalistic version immediately follows : 
" I began to dislike my solitary situation, and to fear I 
should never be able to weather out the winter in so lone- 
ly a dwelling." No man could be less fitted to bear a 
lonely life ; persistence in the attempt would soon have 
brought back his madness. He was longing for a home ; 
and a home was at hand to receive him. It was not, per- 
haps, one of the happiest kind ; but the influence which 
detracted from its advantages was the one which rendered 
it hospitable to the wanderer. If Christian piety was car- 
ried to a morbid excess beneath its roof, Christian charity 
opened its door. 

The religious revival was now in full career, with Wes- 
ley for its chief apostle, organizer, and dictator ; Whitefield 
for its great preacher ; Fletcher of Madeley for its typical 
saint; Lady Huntingdon for its patroness among the aris- 
tocracy, and the chief of its " devout women." From the 
pulpit, but still more from the stand of the field-preacher 
and through a well-trained army of social propagandists, it 
waa assailing the scepticism, the coldness, the frivolity, the 
vices of the age. English society was deeply stirred ; mul- 
titudes were converted, while among those who were not 
converted violent and sometimes cruel antagonism was 



26 COWPER. [chap. 

aroused. The party had two wings — tlie Evangehcals, 
people of the wealtliier class or clerg-ymen of the Church 
of England, who remained within the Establishment ; and 
the Methodists, people of the lower middle class or peas- 
ants, the personal converts and followers of AVesley and 
Whitefield, who, like their leaders, without a positive se- 
cession, soon found themselves organizing a separate spir- 
itual life in the freedom of Dissent. In the early stages 
of the movement the Evangelicals were to be counted at 
most by hundreds, the Methodists by hundreds of thou- 
sands. So far as the masses were concerned, it was, in fact, 
a preaching of Christianity anew. There was a cross divi- 
sion of the party into the Calvinists and those whom the 
Calvinists called Arminians ; Wesley belonging to the lat- 
ter section, while the most pronounced and vehement of 
the Calvinists was " the fierce Toplady." As a rule, the 
darker and sterner element, that which delighted in relig- 
ious terrors and threatenings was Calvinist, the milder and 
gentler, that which preached a gospel of love and hope 
continued to look up to Wesley, and to bear with him the 
reproach of being Arminian. 

It is needless to enter into a minute description of 
Evangelicism and Methodism ; they are not things of the 
past. If Evangelicism has now been reduced to a narrow 
domain by the advancing forces of Ritualism on one side 
and of Rationalism on the other, Methodism is still the 
great Protestant Church, especially beyond the Atlantic. 
The spiritual fire which they have kindled, the character 
which they have produced, the moral reforms which they 
have wrought, the works of charity and philanthropy to 
which they have given birth, are matters not only of re- 
cent memory, but of present experience. Like the great 
Protestant revivals which had preceded them in England, 



n.] AT HUNTINGDON— THE UNWINS. 21 

like the Moravian revival on the Continent, to which they 
were closely related, they sought to bring the soul into 
direct communion with its Maker, rejecting the interven- 
tion of a priesthood or a sacramental system. Unlike the 
previous revivals in England, they warred not against the 
rulers of the Church or State, but only against vice or irre- 
ligion. Consequently, in the characters which they pro- 
duced, as compared with those produced by Wycliffism, 
by the Reformation, and notably by Puritanism, there 
was less of force and the grandeur connected with it, 
more of gentleness, mysticism, and religious love. Even 
Quietism, or something like it, prevailed, especially among 
the Evangelicals, who were not like the Methodists, en- 
gaged in framing a new organization or in wrestling with 
the barbarous vices of the lower orders. No movement 
of the kind has ever been exempt from drawbacks and 
follies, from extravagance, exaggeration, breaches of good 
taste in religious matters, unctuousness, and cant — from 
".himerical attempts to get rid of the flesh and live an 
angelic life on earth — from delusions about special provi- 
dences and miracles — from a tendency to overvalue doc- 
trine and undervalue duty — from arrogant assumption of 
spiritual authority by leaders and preachers — from the 
self-righteousness which fancies itself the object of a di- 
vine election, and looks out with a sort of religious com- 
placency from the Ark of Salvation in which it fancies 
itself securely placed, upon the drowning of an unregener- 
ate world. Still, it will hardly be doubted that in the ef- 
fects produced by Evangelicism and Methodism the good 
has outweighed the evil. Had Jansenism prospered as 
well, France might have had more of reform and less of 
-revolution. The poet of the movement will not be con- 
demned on account of his connexion with it, any more 
C 2* 



28 COWPER. [chap. 

than Milton is condemned on account of his connexion 
with Puritanism, provided it be found that he also served 
art well. 

Cowper, as we have seen, was already converted. In a 
letter written at this time to Lady Hesketh, he speaks of 
himself with great humility " as a convert made in Bed- 
lam, who is more likely to be a stumbling-block to others 
than to advance their faith," though he adds, with reason 
enough, " that he who can ascribe an amendment of life 
and manners, and a reformation of the heart itself, to 
madnes§, is guilty of an absurdity that in any other case 
would fasten the imputation of madness upon himself." 
It is hence to be presumed that he traced his conversion 
to his spiritual intercourse with the Evangelical physician 
of St. Alban's, though the seed sown by Martin Madan may, 
perhaps, also have sprung up in his heart when the more 
propitious season arrived. However that may have been, 
the two great factors of Cowper's life were the malady 
which consigned him to poetic seclusion and the conver- 
sion to Evangelicism, which gave him his inspiration and 
his theme. 

At Huntingdon dwelt the Rev. William Unwin, a cler- 
gyman, taking pupils, his wife, much younger than him- 
self, and their son and daughter. It was a typical family 
of the Revival. Old Mr. Unwin is described by Cowper 
as a Parson Adams. The son, William Unwin, was pre- 
paring for holy orders. He was a man of some mark, and 
received tokens of intellectual respect from Paley, though 
he is best known as the friend to whom many of Cowper's 
letters are addressed. He it was who, struck by the ap- 
pearance of the stranger, sought an opportunity of making 
his acquaintance. He found one, after morning church, 
when Cowper was taking his solitary walk beneath the 



II.] AT HUNTINGDON— THE UNWINS. 29 

trees. Under the influence of religious sympathy the ac- 
quaintance quickly ripened into friendship ; Cowper at 
once became one of the Unwin circle, and soon afterward, 
a vacancy being made by the departure of one of the pu- 
pils, he became a boarder in the house. This position he 
had passionately desired on religious grounds ; but, in truth, 
he might well have desired it on economical grounds also, 
for he had begun to experience the difficulty and expen- 
sivcness, as well as the loneliness, of bachelor housekeep- 
ing, and financial deficit was evidently before him. To 
Mrs. Unwin he was from the first strongly drawn. " I 
met Mrs. Unwin in the street," he says, " and went home 
with her. She and I walked together near two hours in 
the garden, and had a conversation which did me more 
good than I should have received from an audience with 
the first prince in Europe. That woman is a blessing to 
me, and I never see her without being the better for her 
company." Mrs. Unwin's character is written in her por- 
trait with its prim but pleasant features ; a Puritan and a 
precisian she was ; but she was not morose or sour, and 
she had a boundless capacity for affection. Lady Hesketh, 
a woman of the world, and a good judge in every respect, 
says of her at a later period, when she had passed with 
Cowper through many sad and trying years : " She is very 
far from grave ; on the contrary, she is cheerful and gay, 
and laughs de hon coeur upon the smallest provocation. 
Amidst all the little puritanical words which fall from her 
de temps en temps, she seems to have by nature a quiet 
fund of gaiety ; great indeed must it have been, not to 
have been wholly overcome by the close confinement in 
which she has lived, and the anxiety she must have under- 
gone for one whom she certainly loves as well as one hu- 
man being can love another. I will not say she idolizes 



80 COWPER. [chap. 

him, because that she would think wrong ; but she cer- 
tainly seems to possess the truest regard and affection for 
this excellent creature, and. as I said before, has in the 
most literal sense of those words, no will or shadow of 
inclination but what is his. My account of Mrs. Unwin 
may seem, perhaps, to you, on comparing my letters, con- 
tradictory ; but when you consider that I began to write 
at the first moment that I saw her, you will not wonder. 
Her character develops itself by degrees; and though I 
might lead you to suppose her grave and melancholy, she 
is not so by any means. When she speaks upon grave 
subjects, she does express herself with a puritanical tone, 
and in puritanical expressions, but on all subjects she 
seems to have a great disposition to cheerfulness and 
mirth ; and, indeed, had she not, she could not have gone 
through all she has. I must say, too, that she seems to be 
very well read in the English poets, as appears by several 
little quotations, which she makes from time to time, and 
has a true taste for what is excellent in that way." 

When Cowper became an author he paid the highest 
respect to Mrs. Unwin as an instinctive critic, and called 
her his Lord Chamberlain, whose approbation was his suf- 
ficient licence for publication. 

Life in the Unwin family is thus described by the new 
inmate: — "As to amusements — I mean what the world 
calls such — we have none. The place, indeed, swarms with 
them ; and cards and dancing are the professed business 
of almost all the gentle inhabitants of Huntingdon. We 
refuse to take part in them, or to be accessories to this 
way of murdering our time, and by so doing have acquired 
the name of Methodists. Having told you how we do not 
spend our time, I will next say how we do. We breakfast 
commonly between eight and nine ; till eleven, we read 



II.] AT HUNTINGDON— THE UNWINS. 31 

either the Scripture, or the sermons of some faithful 
preacher of those holy mysteries; at eleven we attend 
divine service, which is performed here twice every day ; 
and from twelve to three we separate, and amuse our- 
selves as we please. During that interval, I either read in 
ray own apartment, or walk, or ride, or work in the garden. 
We seldom sit an hour after dinner, but, if the weather 
permits, adjourn to the garden, where, with Mrs. Unwin 
and her son, I have generally the pleasure of religious con- 
versation till tea-time. If it rains, or is too windy for 
walking, we either converse within doors or sing some 
hymns of Martin's collection, and by the help of Mrs. Un- 
win's harpsichord make up a tolerable concert, in which 
our hearts, I hope, are the best performers. After tea we 
sally forth to walk in good earnest. Mrs. TJnwin is a good 
walker, and we have generally travelled about four miles 
before we see home again. When the days are short we 
make this excursion in the former part of the day, between 
church-time and dinner. At night we read and converse 
as before till supper, and commonly finish the evening 
either with hymns or a sermon, and last of all the family 
are called to prayers. I need not tell you that such a life 
as this is consistent with the utmost cheerfulness ; accord- 
ingly, we are all happy, and dwell together in unity as 
brethren." 

Mrs. Cowper, the wife of Major (now Colonel) Cowper, 
to whom this was written, was herself strongly Evangeli- 
cal ; Cowper had, in fact, unfortunately for him, turned 
from his other relations and friends to her on that account. 
She, therefore, w^ould have no difficulty in thinking that 
such a life was consistent with cheerfulness, but ordinary 
readers will ask how it could fail to bring on another fit 
of hypochondria. The answer is probably to be found in 



82 COWPER. [chap. 

the last words of the passage. Overstrained and ascetic 
piety found an antidote in affection. The Unwins were 
Puritans and enthusiasts, but their household was a picture 
of domestic love. 

With the name of Mrs. Cowper is connected an incident 
which occurred at this time, and which illustrates the pro- 
pensity to self-inspection and self-revelation which Cowper 
had in common with Rousseau. Huntingdon, like other 
little towns, was all eyes and gossip ; the new-comer was a 
mysterious stranger who kept himself aloof from the gen- 
eral society, and he naturally became the mark for a little 
stone-throwing. Young Unwin happening to be passing 
near " the Park " on his way from London to Huntingdon, 
Cowper gave him an introduction to its lady, in a letter 
to whom he afterwards disclosed his secret motive. "My 
dear Cousin, — You sent my friend Unwin home to us 
charmed with your kind reception of him, and with every- 
thing he saw at the Park. Shall I once more give you a 
peep into my vile and deceitful heart? What motive do 
you think lay at the bottom of my conduct when I de- 
sired him to call upon you? I did not suspect, at first, 
that pride and vainglory had any share in it ; but quickly 
after I had recommended the visit to him, I discovered, in 
that fruitful soil, the very root of the matter. You know 
I am a stranger here; all such are suspected characters, 
unless they bring their credentials with them. To this 
moment, I believe, it is a matter of speculation in the 
place, whence I came, and to whom I belong. Though 
my friend, you may suppose, before I was admitted an in- 
mate here, was satisfied that I was not a mere vagabond, 
and has, since that time, received more convincing proofs 
of my sponsibility ; yet I could not resist the opportunity 
of furnishing him with ocular demonstration of it, by in- 



II.] AT HUNTINGDON—THE UNWINS. 83 

troducing him to one of my most splendid connexions; 
that when he hears me called 'that fellow Cowper,' which 
has happened heretofore, he may be able, upon unquestion- 
able evidence, to assert my gentlemanhood, and relieve me 
from the weight of that opprobrious appellation. Oh, 
pride ! pride ! it deceives with the subtlety of a serpent, 
and seems to walk erect, though it crawls upon the earth. 
How will it twist and twine itself about to get from under 
the Cross, which it is the glory of our Christian calling to 
be able to bear with patience and good-will. They who 
can guess at the heart of a stranger, — and you especially, 
who are of a compassionate temper, — will be more ready, 
perhaps, to excuse me, in this instance, than I can be to 
excuse myself. But, in good truth, it was abominable 
pride of heart, indignation, and vanity, and deserves no 
better name." * 

Once more, however obsolete Cowper's belief, and the 
language in which he expresses it may have become for 
many of us, we must take it as his philosophy of life. At 
this time, at all events, it was a source of happiness. " The 
storm being passed, a quiet and peaceful serenity of soul 
succeeded ;" and the serenity in this case was unquestion- 
ably produced in part by the faith. 

" I was a stricken deer that left the herd 
Long since ; with many an arrow deep iniSxed 
My panting side was charged, when I withdrew 
To seek a tranquil death in distant shades. 
There was I found by one who had himself 
Been hurt by the archers. In bis side he bore, 
And in his hands and feet, the cruel scars, 
With gentle force soliciting the darts, 
He drew them forth and healed and bade me live." 



34 COWPER. [chap, it 

Cowper thought for a moment of taking orders, but his 
dread of appearing in public conspired with the good 
sense which lay beneath his excessive sensibility to put a 
veto on the design. He, however, exercised the zeal of a 
neophyte in proselytisra to a greater extent than his own 
judgment and good taste approved when his enthusiasm 
had calmed down. 



CHAPTER III. 



AT OLNEY MR. NEWTON. 



CowPER had not been two years with the Unwins when 
Mr. Unwin, the father, was killed by a fall from his horse ; 
this broke up the household. But between Cowper and 
Mrs. Unwin an indissoluble tie had been formed. It seems 
clear, notwithstanding Southey's assertion to the contra- 
ry that they at one time meditated marriage, possibly as a 
propitiation to the evil tongues which did not spare even 
this most innocent connexion ; but they were prevented 
from fulfilling their intention by a return of Cowper's mal- 
ady. They became companions for life. Cowper says 
they were as mother and son to each other ; but Mrs. Un- 
win was only seven years older than he. To label their 
connexion is impossible, and to try to do it would be a 
platitude. In his poems Cowper calls Mrs. Unwin Mary ; 
she seems always to have called him Mr. Cowper. It is 
evident that her son, a strictly virtuous and religious man, 
never had the slightest misgiving about his mother's po- 
sition. 

The pair had to choose a dwelling - place ; tliey chose 
Olney, in Buckinghamshire, on the Ouse. The Ouse was 
" a slow winding river," watering low meadows, from 
which crept pestilential fogs. Olney was a dull town, or 
rather village, inhabited by a population of lace -makers, 



36 COWPER. [chap. 

ill-paid, fever-stricken, and for the most part as brutal as 
they were poor. There was not a woman in the place, ex- 
cepting Mrs. Newton, with whom Mrs. XJnwin could asso- 
ciate, or to whom she could look for help in sickness or 
other need. The house in which the pair took up their 
abode was dismal, prison-like, and tumble-down ; when they 
left it, the competitors for the succession were a cobbler 
and a publican. It looked upon the Market-place, but it 
was in the close neighbourhood of Silver End, the worst 
part of Olney. In winter the cellars were full of water. 
There were no pleasant walks within easy reach, and in 
winter Cowper's only exercise was pacing thirty yards of 
gravel, wdtli the dreary supplement of dumb-bells. What 
was the attraction to this *' well," this " abyss," as Cowper 
himself called it, and as, physically and socially, it was ? 

The attraction was the presence of the Rev. John New- 
ton, then curate of Olney. The vicar was Moses Brown, an 
Evangelical and a religious writer, who has even deserved 
a place among the worthies of the revival ; but a family 
of thirteen children, some of whom it appears too closely 
resembled the sons of Eli, had compelled him to take ad- 
vantage of the indulgent character of the ecclesiastical pol- 
ity of those days by becoming a pluralist and a non-resi- 
dent, so that the curate had Olney to himself. The patron 
was the Lord Dartmouth, who, as Cowper says, "wore a 
coronet and prayed." John Newton was one of the shin- 
ing lights and foremost leaders and preachers of the re- 
vival. His name was great both in the Evangelical church- 
es within the pale of the Establishment, and in the Meth- 
odist churches without it. He was a brand plucked from 
the very heart of the burning. We have a memoir of his 
life, partly written by himself, in the form of letters, and 
completed under his superintendence. It is a monument 



m.] AT OLNEY— MR. KEWTON. 37 

of the age of Smollett and' Wesley, not less characteristic 
than is Cellini's memoir of the times in which he lived. 
His father was master of a vessel, and took him to sea 
when he was eleven. His mother was a pious Dissenter, 
who was at great pains to store his mind with religious 
thoughts and pieces. She died when he was young, and 
his step-mother was not pious. He began to drag his re- 
ligious anchor, and at length, having read Shaftesbury, left 
his theological moorings altogether, and drifted into a wide 
sea of ungodliness, blasphemy, and recklessness of living. 
Such at least is the picture drawn by the sinner saved of 
his own earlier years. While still but a strippling he fell 
desperately in love with a girl of thirteen ; his affection 
for her was as constant as it was romantic ; through all 
his wanderings and sufferings he never ceased to think of 
her, and after seven years she became his wife. His father 
frowned on the engagement, and he became estranged from 
home. He was impressed ; narrowly escaped shipwreck, 
deserted, and was arrested and flogged as a deserter. Re- 
leased from the navy, he was taken into the service of a 
slave-dealer on the coast of Africa, at whose hands, and 
those of the man's negro mistress, he endured every sort of 
ill-treatment and contumely, being so starved that he was 
fain sometimes to devour raw roots to stay his hunger. 
His constitution must have been of iron to carry him 
through all that he endured. In the meantime his indom- 
itable mind was engaged in attempts at self-culture ; he 
studied a Euclid which he had brought with him, drawing 
his diaojrams on the sand ; and he afterwards manao-ed to 
teach himself Latin by means of a Horace and a Latin Bi- 
ble, aided by some slight vestiges of the education which 
he had received at a grammar-school. His conversion was 
brought about by the continued influences of Thomas a 



38 COWPER. [chap. 

Kempis, of a very narrow escape, after terrible sufferings, 
from shipwreck, of the impression made by the sights of 
the mighty deep on a soul which, in its weather-beaten 
casing, had retained its native sensibility, and, we may safe- 
ly add, of the disregarded but not forgotten teachings of 
his pious mother. Providence was now kind to him ; he 
became captain of a slave-ship, and made several voyages 
on the business of the trade. That it was a wicked trade 
he seems to have had no idea ; he says he never knew 
sweeter or more frequent hours of divine communion than 
on his two last voyages to Guinea. Afterwards it occurred 
to him that though his employment was genteel and profit- 
able, it made him a sort of gaoler, unpleasantly conversant 
with both chains and shackles ; and he besought Provi- 
dence to fix him in a more humane calling. 

In answer to his prayer came a fit of apoplexy, which 
made it dangerous for him to go to sea again. He ob- 
tained an office in the port of Liverpool, but soon he set 
his heart on becoming; a minister of the Church of Eno-- 
land. He applied for ordination to the Archbishop of 
York, but not having the degree required by the rules of 
the Establishment, he received through his Grace's secre- 
tary "the softest refusal imaginable." The Archbishop 
had not had the advantage of perusing Lord Macaulay'a 
remarks on the difference between the policy of the Church 
of England and that of the Church of Rome, with regard 
to the utilization of religious enthusiasts. In the end 
Newton was ordained by the Bishop of Lincoln, and threw 
himself with the energy of a new-born apostle upon the 
irreligion and brutality of Olney. No Carthusian's breast 
could glow more intensely with the zeal which is the off- 
spring of remorse. Newton was a Calvinist, of course, 
though it seems not an extreme one ; otherwise he would 



III.] AT OLNEY— MR. NEWTON. 39 

probably have confirmed Cowper in the darkest of halhi- 
cinations. His religion was one of mystery and miracle, 
full of sudden conversions, special providences, and satanic 
visitations. He himself says that "his name was up about 
the country for preaching people mad ;" it is true that 
in the eyes of the profane Methodism itself was madness ; 
but he goes on to say " whether it is owing to the seden- 
tary life the women live here, poring over their (lace) 
pillows for ten or twelve hours every day, and breathing 
confined air in their crowded little rooms, or whatever may 
be the immediate cause, I suppose we have near a dozen 
in different degrees disordered in their heads, and most of 
them I believe truly gracious people." He surmises that 
" these things are perhiitted in judgment, that they who 
seek occasion for cavilling and stumbling may have what 
they want." Nevertheless there were in him not only 
force, courage, burning zeal for doing good, but great 
kindness, and even tenderness of heart. " I see in this 
world," he said, "two heaps of human happiness and mis- 
ery ; now, if I can take but the smallest bit from one heap 
and add it to the other, I carry a point — if, as I go home, 
a child has dropped a half-penny, and by giving it another 
I can wipe away its tears, I feel I have done something." 
There was even in him a strain, if not of humour, of a 
shrewdness which was akin to it, and expressed itself in 
many pithy sayings. " If two angels came down from 
heaven to execute a divine command, and one was ap- 
pointed to conduct an empire and the other to sweep a 
street in it, they would feel no inclination to change em- 
ployments." " A Christian should never plead spirituality 
for being a sloven ; if he be but a shoe-cleaner, he should 
be the best in the parish." " My principal method for de- 
feating heresy is by establishing truth. One proposes to 



40 COWPER. [chap. 

fill a bushel with tares ; now if I can fill it first with wheat, 
I shall defy his attempts." That his Calvinism was not 
very dark or sulphureous, seems to be shown from his re- 
peating with gusto the saying of one of the old. women of 
Olney when some preacher dwelt on the doctrine of pre- 
destination — " Ah, I have long settled that point ; for if 
God had not chosen me before I was born, I am sure he 
would have seen nothing to have chosen me for after- 
wards." That he had too much sense to take mere pro- 
fession for religion appears from his describing the Cal- 
vinists of Olney as of two sorts, which reminded him of 
the two baskets of Jeremiah's figs. The iron constitution 
which had carried him through so many hardships ena- 
bled him to continue in his ministfy to extreme old age. 
A friend at length counselled him to stop before he found 
himself stopped by being able to speak no longer. "I 
cannot stop," he said, raising his voice. " What ! shall 
the old African blasphemer stop while he can speak ?" 

At the instance of a common friend, Newton had paid 
Mrs. Unwin a visit at Huntingdon, after her husband's 
death, and had at once established the ascendency of a 
powerful character over her and Cowper. He now beck- 
oned the pair to his side, placed them in the house adjoin- 
ing his own, and opened a private door between the two 
gardens, so as to have his spiritual children always beneath 
his eye. Under this, in the most essential respect, unhap- 
py influence, Cowper and Mrs. Unwin together entered on 
" a decided course of Christian happiness ;" that is to say, 
they spent all their days in a round of religious exercises 
without relaxation or relief. On fine summer evenings, as 
the sensible Lady Hesketh saw with dismay, instead of a 
walk, there was a prayer -meeting. Cowper himself was 
niade to do violence to his intense shyness by leading in 



III.] AT OLNEY— MR. NEWTON. 41 

prayer. He was also made to visit the poor at once on 
spiritual missions, and on that of almsgiving, for which 
Thornton, the religious philanthropist, supplied Newton 
and his disciples with means. This, which Southey appears 
to think about the worst part of Newton's regimen, was 
probably its redeeming feature. The effect of doing good 
to others on any mind was sure to be good; and the sight 
of real suffering was likely to banish fancied ills. Cowper 
in this way gained, at all events, a practical knowledge of 
the poor, and learned to do them justice, though from a 
rather too theological point of view. Seclusion from the 
sinful world was as much a part of the system of Mr. 
Newton as it was of the system of Saint Benedict. Cow- 
per was almost entirely cut oft' from intercourse with his 
friends and people of his own class. He dropped his cor- 
respondence even with his beloved cousin. Lady Hesketh, 
and would probably have dropped his correspondence with 
Hill, had not Hill's assistance in money matters been in- 
dispensable. To complete his mental isolation, it appears 
that, having sold his library, he had scarcely any books. 
Such a course of Christian happiness as this could only 
end in one way ; and Newton himself seems to have had 
the sense to see that a storm was brewing, and that there 
was no way of conjuring it but by contriving some more 
congenial occupation. So the disciple was commanded to 
employ his poetical gifts in contributing to a hymn-book 
which Newton was compiling. Cowper's OIney hymns 
have not any serious value as poetry. Hymns rarely have. 
The relations of man with Deity transcend and repel po- 
etical treatment. There is nothing in them on which the 
creative imagination can be exercised. Hymns can be lit- 
tle more than incense of the worshipping soul. Those of 
the Latin Church are the best ; not because they are better 



42 GOWPER. [chap. 

poetry than the rest (for they are not), but because their 
language is the most sonorous. Covvper's hymns were ac- 
cepted by the religious body for which they were written, 
as expressions of its spiritual feeling and desires; so far 
they were successful. They are the work of a religious 
man of culture, and free from anything wild, erotic, or 
unctuous. But, on the other hand, there is nothing in 
them suited to be the vehicle of lofty devotion ; nothing, 
that we can conceive a multitude, or even a prayer-meeting, 
uplifting to heaven with voice and heart. Southey has 
pointed to some passages on which the shadow of the ad- 
vancing malady falls ; but in the main there is a predom- 
inance of religious joy and hope. The most despondent 
hymn of the series is Temptation^ the thought of which 
resembles that of The Castaway. 

Cowper's melancholy may have been aggravated by the 
loss of his only brother, who died about this time, and at 
whose death-bed he was present ; though in the narrative 
which he wrote, joy at John's conversion and the religious 
happiness of his end seems to exclude the feelings by 
which hypochondria was likely to be fed. But his mode 
of life under Newton was enough to account for the re- 
turn of his disease, which in this sense may be fairly laid 
to the charge of religion. He again went mad, fancied, as 
before, that he was rejected of Heaven, ceased to pray 
as one helplessly doomed, and again attempted suicide. 
Newton and Mrs. Unwin at first treated the disease as a 
diabolical visitation, and " with deplorable consistency," 
to borrow the phrase used by one of their friends in the 
case of Cowper's desperate abstinence from prayer, ab- 
stained from calling in a physician. Of this, again, their 
religion must bear the reproach. In other respects they 
behaved admirably. Mrs. Unwin, shut up for sixteen 



III.] AT OLNEY— MR. NEWTON. 43 

months with her unhappy partner, tended him with un- 
failing love ; alone she did it, for he could bear no one 
else about him ; though, to make her part more trying, he 
had conceived the insane idea that she hated him. Sel- 
dom has a stronger proof been given of the sustaining 
power of affection. Assuredly, of whatever Cowper may 
have afterwards done for his kind, a great part must be 
set down to the credit of Mrs. Unwin. 

" Mary ! I want a lyre with other strings, 

Such aid from heaven as some have feigned they drew, 

An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new 
And undebased by praise of meaner things, 
That, ere through age or woe I shed my wings, 

I may record thy worth with honour due, 

In verse as musical as thou art true. 
And that immortalizes w^hom it sings. 
But thou hast little need. There is a book 

By seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light, 
On which the eyes of God not rarely look, 

A chronicle of actions just and bright ; 
There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary, shine, 
And, since thou own'st that praise, I spare thee mine." 

Newton's friendship, too, was sorely tried. In the midst 
of the malady the lunatic took it into his head to transfer 
himself from his own house to the Vicarage, which he ob- 
stinately refused to leave ; and Newton bore this infliction 
for several months without repining, though he might well 
pray earnestly for his friend's deliverance. *' The Lord 
has numbered the days in which I am appointed to wait 
on hira in this dark valley, and he has given us such a 
love to him, both as a believer and a friend, that I am not 
wea^-y : but to be sure his deliverance would be to me one 
D 3 



44 COWPER. [chap. 

of the greatest blessings iny thoughts can conceive." Di.. 
Cotton was at last called in, and under his treatment, evi 
dently directed against a bodily disease, Cowper was a'li 
length restored to sanity. 

Newton once compared his own walk in the world tD 
that of a physician going through Bedlam. But he was 
not skilful in his treatment of the literally insane. He 
thought to cajole Cowper out of his cherished horrors by 
calling his attention to a case resembling his own. The 
case was that of Simon Browne, a Dissenter, who had co i- 
ceived the idea that, being under the displeasure of Hes i- 
en,he had been entirely deprived of his rational being ai(d 
left with merely his animal nature. He had accordingly 
resigned his ministry, and employed himself in compilir ^ 
a dictionary, which, he said, was doing nothing that cou". d 
require a reasonable soul. He seems to have thougnt 
that theology fell under the same category, for he pro- 
ceeded to write some theological treatises, which he ded - 
cated to Queen Caroline, calling her Majesty's attention t j 
the singularity of the authorship as the most remarkab" e 
phenomenon of her reign. Cowper, however, instead < f 
falling into the desired train of reasoning, and being lei 
to suspect the existence of a similar illusion in himself, 
merely rejected the claim of the pretended rival in spir- 
itual affliction, declaring his own case to be far the more 
deplorable of the two. 

Before the decided course of Christian happiness had 
time again to culminate in madness, fortunately for Cow- 
per, Newton left Olney for St. Mary Woolnoth. He was 
driven away at last by a quarrel with his barbarous parish- 
ioners, the cause of which did him credit. A fire broke 
out at Olney, and burnt a good many of its straw-thatched 
cottages. N-ewton ascribed the extinction of the fire rath- 



in.] AT OLNEY— MR. NEWTON. 45 

er to prayer than water, but he took the lead in practical 
measures of relief, and tried to remove the earthly cause 
of such visitations by putting- an end to bonfires and illu- 
minations on the 5th of November. Threatened with the 
loss of their Guy Fawkes, the barbarians rose upon him, 
and he had a narrow escape from their violence. We are 
reminded of the case of Cotton Mather, who, after being a 
leader in witch-burning, nearly sacrificed his life in com- 
batting the fanaticism which opposed itself to the intro- 
duction of inoculation. Let it always be remembered that 
besides its theological side, the Revival had its philan- 
thropic and moral side ; that it abolished the slave-trade, 
and at last slavery ; that it waged war, and effective war, 
under the standard of the gospel, upon masses of vice and 
brutality, which had been totally neglected by the torpor 
of the Establishment ; that among large classes of the peo- 
ple it was the great civilizing agency of the time. 

Newton was succeeded as curate of Olney by his dis- 
ciple, and a man of somewhat the same cast of mind and 
character, Thomas Scott, the writer of the Commentary 
on the Bible and The Force of Truth. To Scott Cowper 
seems not to have greatly taken. He complains that, as a 
preacher, he is always scolding the congregation. Perhaps 
Newton had foreseen that it would be so, for he specially 
commended the spiritual son whom he was leaving to the 
care of the Rev. William Bull, of the neighbouring town of 
Newport Pagnell, a dissenting minister, but a member of a 
spiritual connexion which did not stop at the line of de- 
marcation between Nonconformity and the Establishment. 
To Bull Cowper did greatly take ; he extols him as " a 
Dissenter, but a liberal one," a man of letters and of gen- 
ius, master of a fine imagination — or, rather, not master of 
it — and addresses him as Carissime Taurorum. It is rath- 



46 COWPER. [chap. iii. 

er singular that Newton should have given himself such a 
successor. Bull was a great smoker, and had made him- 
self a cozy and secluded nook in his garden for the enjoy- 
ment of his pipe. He was probably something of a spir- 
itual as well as of a physical Quietist, for he set Cowper to 
translate the poetry of the great exponent of Quietism, 
Madame Guyon. The theme of all the pieces which Cow- 
per has translated is the same — Divine Love and the rapt- 
ures of the heart that enjoys it — the blissful union of the 
drop with the Ocean — the Evangelical Nirvana. If this 
line of thought was not altogether healthy, or conducive 
to the vigorous performance of practical duty, it was, at all 
events, better than the dark fancy of Reprobation. In his 
admiration of Madame Guyon, her translator showed his 
affinity, and that of Protestants of the same school, to 
Fenelon and the Evangelical element which has lurked in 
the Roman Catholic church since the days of Thomas a 
Kempis. 



CHAPTER IV. 

AUTHORSHIP THE MORAL SATIRES. 

Since his recovery, Cowper had been looking out for what 
he most needed, a pleasant occupation. He tried draw- 
ing, carpentering, gardening. Of gardening he had always 
been fond ; and he understood it, as shown by the loving 
though somewhat " stercdraceous " minuteness of some 
passages in The Task. A little greenhouse, used as a par- 
lour in summer, where he sat surrounded by beauty and 
fragrance, and lulled by pleasant sounds, was another prod- 
uct of the same pursuit, and seems almost Elysian in that 
dull, dark life. He also found amusement in keeping tame 
hares, and he fancied that he had reconciled the hare to 
man and dog. His three tame hares are among the canon- 
ized pets of literature, and they were to his genius what 
" Sailor " was to the genius of Byron. But Mrs. Unwin, 
who had terrible reason for studying his case, saw that 
the thing most wanted was congenial employment for the 
mind, and she incited him to try his hand at poetry on a 
larger scale. He listened to her advice, and when he was 
nearly fifty years of age became a poet. He had acquired 
the faculty of verse-writing, as we have seen ; he had even 
to some extent formed his manner when he was young. 
Age must by this time have quenched his fire, and tamed 
his imagination, so that the didactic style would suit him 



/ 



48 COWPER. [chap. 

best. In the length of the interval between his early 
poems and his great work he resembles Milton ; but wide- 
ly different in the two cases had been the current of the 
intervening years. 

Poetry written late in life is, of course, free from youth- 
ful crudity and extravagance. It also escapes the youthful 
tendency to imitation. Cowper's authorship is ushered in 
by Southey with a history of English poetry ; but this is 
hardly in place ; Cowper had little connexion with any- 
thing before him. Even his knowledge of poetry was not 
great. In his youth he had read the great poets, and had 
studied Milton especially with the ardour of intense admi- 
ration. Nothing ever made him so angry as Johnson's 
Life of Milton. " Oh !" he cries, " I could thrash his old 
jacket till I made his pension jingle in his pocket." 
Churchill had made a great — far too great — an impression 
on him when he was a Templar. Of Churchill, if of any- 
body, he must be regarded as a follower, though only in 
his earlier and less successful poems. In expression he al- 
ways regarded as a model the neat and gay simplicity of 
Prior. But so little had he kept up his reading of any- 
thing but sermonfi and hymns, that he learned for the first 
tiiTie from Johnson's Lives the existence of Collins. He 
is the offspring of the Religious Revival rather than of 
any school of art. His most important relation to any of 
his predecessors is, in fact, one of antagonism to the hard 
glitter of Pope. 

In urging her companion to write poetry, Mrs. Unwin 
was on the right path ; her puritanism led her astray in 
the choice of a theme. She suggested The Progress of 
Error as a subject for a " Moral Satire." It was unhap- 
pily adopted, and The Progress of Error was followed by 
Truths Table Talk^ Expostulation^ Hope, Charity, Conver- 



IV.] AUTHORSHIP. 49 

sation, and Retirement, When the series was published, 
Table Talk was put first, being supposed to be the lightest 
and the most attractive to an unregenerate world. The 
judgment passed upon this set of poems at the time by 
the Critical Review seems blasphemous to the fond biog- 
rapher, and is so devoid of modern smartness as to be al- 
most interesting as a literary fossil. But it must be deem- 
ed essentially just, though the reviewer errs, as many re- 
viewers have erred, in measuring the writer's capacity by 
the standard of his first performance. " These poems," 
said the Critical Review, " are written, as we learn from the 
title-page, by Mr. Cowper of the Inner Temple, who seems 
to be a man of a sober and religious turn of mind, with a 
benevolent heart, and a serious wish to inculcate the pre- 
cepts of morality ; he is not, however, possessed of any 
superior abilities or the powev of genius requisite for so 
ai'duous an undertaking. . . . He says what is incontro- 
vertible, and what has been said over and over again with 
much gravity, but says nothing new, sprightly, or enter- 
taining ; travelling on a plain, level, flat road, with great 
composure almost through the whole long and tedious vol- 
ume, which is little better than a dull sermon in very in- 
different verse on Truth, the Progress of Error, Charity, 
and some other grave subjects. If this author had follow- 
ed the advice given by Caraccioli, and which he has chosen 
for one of the mottoes prefixed to these poems, he would 
have clothed his indisputable truths in some more becom- 
ing disguise, and rendered his work much more agreeable. 
In its present shape we cannot compliment him on its 
beauty ; for as this bard himself sweetly sings : — 

" The clear harangue, and cold as it is clear, 
Falls soporific on the listless ear." 



50 COWPER. [chap. 

In justice to the bard it ought to be said that he wrote 
under the eye of the Rev. John Newton, to whotn the de- 
sign had been duly submitted, and who had given his im- 
primatur in the shape of a preface which took Johnson, 
the pubUsher, aback by its gravity. Newton would not 
have sanctioned any poetry which had not a distinctly re- 
ligious object, and he received an assurance from the poet 
that the lively passages were introduced only as honey on 
the rim of the medicinal cup, to commend its healing con- 
tents to the lips of a giddy world. The Rev. John New- 
ton must have been exceedingly austere if he thought that 
the quantity of honey used was excessive. 

A genuine desire to make society better is always pres- 
ent in these poems, and its presence lends them the only 
interest which they possess except as historical monuments 
of a religious movement. Of satirical vigour they have 
scarcely a semblance. There are three kinds of satire, cor- 
responding to as many different views of humanity and 
life ; the Stoical, the Cynical, and the Epicurean. Of Sto- 
ical satire, with its strenuous hatred of vice and wrong, the 
type is Juvenal. Of Cynical satire, springing from bitter 
contempt of humanity, the type is Swift's Gulliver, while 
its quintessence is embodied in his lines on the Day of 
Judgment. Of Epicurean satire, flowing from a contempt 
of humanity which is not bitter, and lightly playing with 
the weakness and vanities of mankind, Horace is the clas- 
sical example. To the first two kinds, Cowper's nature 
was totally alien, and when he attempts anything in either 
of those lines, the only result is a querulous and censorious 
acerbity, in which his real feelings had no part, and which 
on mature reflection offended his own better taste. In 
the Horatian kind he might have excelled, as the episode 
of the Retired Statesman in one of these poems shows. 



IV.] THE MORAL SATIRES. 51 

He might have excelled, that is, if like Horace he had 
known the world. But he did not know the world. He 
saw the "great Babel" only "through the loopholes of 
retreat," and in the columns of his weekly newspaper. 
Even during the years, long past, which he spent in the 
world, his experience had been confined to a small literary 
circle. Society was to him an abstraction on which he 
discoursed like a pulpiteer. His satiric whip not only has 
no lash, it is brandished in the air. 

No man was ever less qualified for the office of a cen- 
sor; his judgment is at once disarmed, and a breach in his 
principles is at once made by the slightest personal influ- 
ence. Bishops are bad ; they are like the Cretans, evil 
beasts and slow bellies ; but the bishop whose brother 
Cowper knows is a blessing to the Church. Deans and 
Canons are lazy sinecurists, but there is a bright exception 
in the case of the Cowper who held a golden stall at Dur- 
ham. Grinding India is criminal, but Warren Hastings is 
acquitted, because he was with Cowper at Westminster. 
Discipline was deplorably relaxed in all colleges except 
that of which Cowper's brother was a fellow. Pluralities 
and resignation bonds, the grossest abuses of the Church, 
were perfectly defensible in the case of any friend or ac- 
quaintance of this Church Reformer. Bitter lines against 
Popery inserted in The Task were struck out, because the 
writer had made the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Throck- 
morton, who were Roman Catholics. Smoking was de- 
testable, except when practised by dear Mr. Bull. Even 
gambling, the blackest sin of fashionable society, is not to 
prevent Fox, the great Whig, from being a ruler in Israel. 
Besides, in all his social judgments, Cowper is at a wrong 
point of view. He is always deluded by the idol of his 
cave. He w^rites perpetually on the twofold assumption 
3* 



52 COWPER. [chap. 

that a life of retirement is more favourable to virtue than a 
life of action, and that " God made the country, while man 
made the town." Both parts of the assumption are un- 
true. A life of action is more favourable to virtue, as a 
rule, than a life of retirement, and the development of 
humanity is higher and richer, as a rule, in the town than 
in the country. If Cowper's retirement was virtuous, it 
was so because he was actively employed in the exercise 
of his highest faculties : had he been a mere idler, secluded 
from his kind, his retirement would not have been virtuous 
at all. His flight, from the world was rendered necessary 
by his malady, and respectable by his literary work; but 
it was a flight and not a victory. His misconception was 
fostered and partly produced by a religion which was es- 
sentially ascetic, and which, while it gave birth to charac- 
ters of the highest and most energetic beneficence, repre- 
sented salvation too little as the reward of effort, too much 
as the reward of passive belief and of spiritual emotion. 

The most readable of the Moral Satires is Retirement, in 
which the writer is on his own ground, expressing his gen- 
uine feelings, and which is, in fact, a foretaste of The 
Task. Expostulation, a warning to England from the ex- 
ample of the Jews, is the best constructed ; the rest are 
totally wanting in unity, and even in connexion. In all 
there are flashes of epigrammatic smartness. 

" How shall I speak thee, or thy power address, 
Thou God of our idolatry, the press ? 
By thee, religion, liberty, and laws 
Exert their iuflneuce, and advance their cause ; 
By thee, worse plagues than Pharaoh's land befel, 
Diffused, make earth the vestibule of hell: 
Thou fountain, at which drink the good and wise, 
Thou ever-bubbling spring of endless lies, 



IV.] THE MORAL SATIRES. 53 

Like Eden's dread probationary tree, 
Knowledge of good and evil is from thee." 

Occasionally there are passages of higher merit. The 
episode of statesmen in Retirement has been already men- 
tioned. The lines on the two disciples going to Emmaus 
in Conversation, though little more than a paraphrase of 
the Gospel narrative, convey pleasantly the Evangelical 
idea of the Divine Friend. Cowper says in one of his let- 
ters that he had been intimate with a man of fine taste 
who had confessed to him that though he could not sub- 
scribe to the truth of Christianity itself, he could never 
read this passage of St. Luke without being deeply affected 
by it, and feeling that if the stamp of divinity was im- 
pressed upon anything in the Scriptures, it was upon that 
passage. 

" It happen'cl on a solemn eventide, 
Soon after He that was our surety died. 
Two bosom friends, each pensively inclined. 
The scene of all those sorrows left behind, 
Sought their own village, busied as they went 
In musings worthy of the great event : 
They spake of him they loved, of him whose life, 
Though blameless, had iucurr'd perpetual strife, 
Whose deeds had left, in spite of hostile arts, 
A deep memorial graven on their hearts. 
The recollection, like a vein of ore. 
The farther traced eurich'd them still the more ; 
They thought him, and they justly thought him, one 
Sent to do more than he appear'd to have done, 
To exalt a people, and to i^lace them high 
Above all else, and wonder'd he should die. 
Ere yet they brought their journey to an end, 
A stranger join'd them, courteous as a friend, 



54 COWPER. [chap. 

And iisk'd them with a kind engaging air 
What their affliction was, and begg'd a share. 
Inform'd, he gather'd np the broken thread, 
And truth and wisdom gracing all he said, 
Explaiu'd, illustrated, and search'd so well 
The tender theme on which they chose to dwell. 
That reaching home, the night, they said is near, 
We must not now be parted, sojourn here. — 
The new acquaintance soon became a guest. 
And made so welcome at their simple feast. 
He bless'd the bread, but vanish'd at the word. 
And left them both exclaiming, 'Twas the Lord! 
Did not our hearts feel all he deign'd to say. 
Did they not burn within us by the way ?" 

The prude going to morning church in Truth is a good 
rendering of Hogarth's picture : — 

" Yon ancient prude, whose wither'd features show 
She might be young some forty years ago, 
Her elbows pinion'd close upon her hips. 
Her head erect, her fan upon her lips. 
Her eyebrows arch'd, her eyes both gone astray 
To watch yon amorous couple in their play. 
With bony and uukerchief 'd neck defies 
The rude inclemency of wintry skies. 
And sails with lappet-head and mincing airs 
Daily, at clink of bell, to morning prayers. 
To thrift and i^arsimony much inclined, 
She yet allows herself that boy behind ; 
The shivering urchin, bending as he goes. 
With slipshod heels, and dew-drop at his nose, 
His predecessor's coat advanced to wear. 
Which future pages are yet doom'd to share; 
Carries her Bible tuck'd beneath his arm, 
And hides his hands to keep his fingers warm." 



ir.] THE MORAL SATIRES. 55 

Of personal allusions there are a few ; if the satirist had 
not been prevented from indulging in them by his taste, 
he would have been debarred by his ignorance. Lord 
Chesterfield, as the incarnation of the world and the most 
brilliant servant of the arch-enemy, comes in for a lashing 
under the name of Petronius. 

"Petronius! all the muses weej) for thee, 
But every tear shall scald thy memory. 
The graces too, while virtue at their shrine 
Lay bleediug under that soft hand of thiue, 
Felt each a mortal stab in her own breast, 
Abhorr'd the sacrifice, and cursed the priest. 
Thou polish'd and high-finish'd foe to truth, 
Gray-beard corrupter of our listeuiug youth, 
To liurge and skim away the filth of vice, 
That so refined it might the more eutice. 
Then pour it ou the morals of thy sou 
To taiut Ms heart, was worthy of thine own." 

This is about the nearest approach to Juvenal that the 
Evangelical satirist ever makes. In Hope there is a ve- 
hement vindication of the memory of Whitefield. It is 
rather remarkable that there is no mention of Wesley. 
But Cowper belonged to the Evangelical rather than to 
the Methodist section. It may be doubted whether the 
living Whitefield would have been much to his taste. 

In the versification of the moral satires there are fre- 
quent faults, especially in the earlier poems of the series; 
though Cowper's power of writing musical verse is attested 
both by the occasional poems and by The Task. 

With the Moral Satires may be coupled, though written 
later. Tirocinium ; or, a Review of Schools. Here Cowper 
has the advantage "of treating a subject which he under- 



66 COWPER. [chap. 

stood, about which he felt strongly, and desired for a prac- 
tical purpose to stir the feelings of his readers. He set to 
work in bitter earnest. " There is a sting," he says, " in 
verse that prose neither has nor can have ; and I do not 
know that schools in the gross, and especially public schools, 
have ever been so pointedly condemned before. But they 
are become a nuisance, a pest, an abomination, and it is fit 
that the eyes and noses of mankind should be opened, if 
possible, to perceive it." His descriptions of the miseries 
which children in his day endured, and, in spite of all our 
improvements, must still to some extent endure, in board- 
ing-schools, and of the effects of the system in estranging 
boys from their parents and deadening home affections, 
are vivid and true. Of course, the Public School system 
was not to be overturned by rhyming, but the author of 
Tirocinium awakened attention to its faults, and probably 
did something towards amending them. The best lines, 
perhaps, have been already quoted in connexion with the 
history of the writer's boyhood. There are, however, oth- 
er telling passages, such as that on the indiscriminate use 
of emulation as a stimulus : — 

*'Onr public hives of puerile resort 
That are of chief and most approved report, 
To such base hopes in many a sordid soul 
Owe their repute in part, but not the whole. 
A ijriuciple, whose proud pretensions pass 
Uuquestiou'd, though the jewel be but glass, 
That with a world not often over-nice 
Ranks as a virtue, and is yet a vice, 
Or rather a gross compound, justly tried, 
Of envy, hatred, jealousy, and pride, 
Contributes most perhaps to enhance their famej, 
And Emulation is its precious name. 



IV.] THE MORAL SATIRES. 57 

Boys once on fire with that contentious zeal 
Feel all the rage that female rivals feel ; 
The prize of beauty in a woman's eyes 
Not brighter than in theirs the scholar's prize. 
The spirit of that competition burns 
With all varieties of ill by turns. 
Each vainly magnifies his own success, 
Resents his fellow's, wishes i^" were less, 
Exults in bis miscarriage if he fail, 
Deems his reward too great if he prevail, 
And labours to surpass hini day and night, 
Less for improvement than to tickle spite. 
The spur is powerful, and I grant its force ; 
It pricks the genius forward in its course. 
Allows short time for play, and none for sloth, 
And felt alike by each, advances both, 
But judge where so much evil intervenes. 
The end, though plausible, not worth the means. 
Weigh, for a moment, classical desert 
Against a heart depraved and temper hurt, 
Hurt, too, perhaps for life, for early wrong 
Done to the nobler part, affects it long. 
And you are staunch indeed in learning's cause. 
If you can crown a discipline that draws 
Such mischiefs after it, with much ax)plause." 

He might have done more, if he had been able to point 
to the alternative of a good day-school, as a combination 
of home affections with the superior teachings hardly to 
be found, except in a large school, and which Cowper, in 
drawing his comparison between the two systems, fails to 
take into account. 

To the same general class of poems belongs Anti-The- 
lypthora, which it is due to Cowper's memory to say was 
not published in his lifetime. It is an angry pasquinade 



58 COWPER. [chap. 

on an absurd book advocating polygamy on Biblical 
grounds, by the Rev. Martin Madan, Cowper's quondam 
spiritual counsellor. Alone among Cowper's works it has 
a taint of coarseness. 

The Moral Satires pleased Franklin, to whom their social 
philosophy was congenial, as at a later day, in common 
with all Cowper's works, they pleased Cobden, who no 
doubt specially relished the passage in Charity, embody- 
ing the philanthropic sentiment of Free Trade. There 
was a trembling consultation as to the expediency of 
bringing the volume under the notice of Johnson. " One 
of his pointed sarcasms, if he should happen to be dis- 
pleased, would soon find its way into all companies, and 
spoil the sale." " 1 think it would be Avell to send in our 
joint names, accompanied with a handsome card, such an 
one as you will know how to fabricate,, and such as may 
predispose him to a favourable perusal of the book, by 
coaxing him into a good temper ; for he is a great bear, 
with all his learning and penetration." Fear prevailed; 
but it seems that the book found its way into the dicta- 
tor's hands, that his judgment on it was kind, and that he 
even did something to temper the wind of adverse criti- 
cism to the shorn lamb. Yet parts of it were likely to 
incur his displeasure as a Tory, as a Churchman, and as 
one who greatly preferred Fleet Street to the beauties of 
nature; while with the sentimental misery of the writer, 
he could have had no sympathy whatever. Of the incom- 
pleteness of Johnson's view of character there could be no 
better instance than the charming weakness of Cowper. 
Thurlow and Colman did not even acknowledge their 
copies, and were lashed for their breach of friendship 
with rather more vigour than the Moral Satires display, 
in The Valedictory, which unluckily survived for post' 



IV.] THE MORAL SATIRES. 59 

luimous publication when the culprits had made their 
peace. 

Cowper certainly misread himself if he believed that 
ambition, even literary ambition, was a large element in 
his character. But having published, he felt a keen inter- 
est in the success of his publication. Yet he took its fail- 
ure and the adverse criticism very calmly. With all his 
sensitiveness, from irritable and suspicious egotism, such 
as is the most common cause of moral madness, he was 
singularly free. In this respect his philosophy served him 
weil. 

It may safely be said that the Moral Satires would have 
sunk into oblivion if they had not been buoyed up by The 
Task. 
E 



CHAPTER V. 



THE TASK. 



Mrs, Unwin's influence produced the Moral Satires. The 
Task was born of a more potent inspiration. One day- 
Mrs. Jones, the wife of a neighbouring clergyman, came 
into Olney to shop, and with her came her sister, Lady 
Austen, the widow of a Baronet, a woman of the world, 
who had lived much in France, gay, sparkling and viva- 
cious, but at the same time full of feeling even to over- 
flowing. The apparition acted like magic on the recluse. 
He desired Mrs. Unwin to ask the two ladies to stay to 
tea ; then shrank from joining the party which he had him- 
self invited ; ended by joining it, and, his shyness giving 
way with a rush, engaged in animated conversation with 
Lady Austen, and Avalked with her part of the way home. 
On her an equally great effect appears to have been pro- 
duced. A warm friendship at once sprang up, and be- 
fore long Lady Austen had verses addressed to her as Sis- 
ter Anne. Her ladyship, on her part, was smitten with a 
great love of retirement, and at the same time with great 
admiration for Mr. Scott, the curate of Olney, as a preacher, 
and she resolved to fit up for herself " that part of our great 
building which is at present occupied by Dick Coleman, 
his wife and child, and a thousand rats." That a woman 
of fashion, accustomed to French salons, should choose 
such an abode, with a pair of Puritans for her only soci- 



CHAP, v.] THE TASK. 61 

ety, seems to show that one of the Puritans at least must 
have possessed great powers of attraction. Better quar- 
ters M'ere found for her in the Vicarage; and the private 
way between the gardens, which apparently had been 
closed since Newton's departure, was opened again. 

Lady Austen's presence evidently wrought on Cowper 
like an elixir: "From a scene of the most uninterrupted 
retirement," he writes to Mrs. Unwin, " we have passed at 
once into a state of constant engagement. Not that our 
society is much multiplied ; the addition of an individual 
has made all this difference. Lady Austen and we pass 
our days alternately at each other's Chateau. In the 
morning I walk with one or other of the ladies, and in the 
evening wind thread. Thus did Hercules, and thus proba- 
bly did Samson, and thus do I ; and, were both those he- 
roes living, I should not fear to challenge them to a trial 
of skill in that business, or doubt to beat them both." It 
was, perhaps, while he was winding thread that Lady Aus- 
ten told him the story of John Gilpin. He lay awake at 
night laughing over it, and next morning produced the 
ballad. It soon became famous, and was recited by Hen- 
derson, a popular actor, on the stage, though, as its gentil- 
ity was doubtful, its author withheld his name. He af- 
terwards fancied that this wonderful piece of humour had 
been written in a mood of the deepest depression. Prob- 
ably he had written it in an interval of high spirits be- 
tween two such moods. Moreover, he sometimes exag- 
gerated his own misery. He will begin a letter with a de 
profundis, and towards the end forget his sorrows, glide 
into commonplace topics, and write about them in the 
ordinary strain. Lady Austen inspired John Gilpin. She 
inspired, it seems, the lines on the loss of the Royal 
George. She did more: she invited Cowper to try his 



62 COWPER. [chap. 

hand at something considerable in blank verse. When 
he asked her for a subject, she was happier in her choice 
than the lady wbo had suggested the Progress of Error. 
She bade him take the sofa on which she was reclining, 
and which, sofas being then uncommon, was a more strik- 
ing and suggestive object than it would be now. The 
right chord was struck ; the subject was accepted ; and 
The Sofa grew^ into The Task ; the title of the song re- 
minding us that it was " commanded by the fair." As 
Paradise Lost is to militant Puritanism, so is The Task to 
the religious movement of its author's time. To its char- 
acter as the poem of a sect it no doubt owed and still 
owes much of its popularity. Not only did it give beau- 
tiful and effective expression to the sentiments of a large 
religious party, but it was about the only poetry that a 
strict Methodist or Evangelical could read ; while to those 
whose worship was unritualistic, and who were debarred 
by their principles from the theatre and the concert, any- 
thing in the way of art that was not illicit must have been 
eminently welcome. But The Task has merits of a more 
universal and enduring kind. Its author himself says of 
it : — " If the work cannot boast a regular plan (in which 
respect, however, I do not think it altogether indefensi- 
ble), it may yet boast that the reflections are naturally 
suggested always by the preceding passage, and that, ex- 
cept the fifth book, which is rather of a political aspect, 
the whole has one tendency, to discountenance the mod- 
ern enthusiasm after a London life, and to recommend 
rural ease and leisure as friendly to the cause of piety and 
virtue." A regular plan, assuredly, The Task has not. It 
rambles through a vast variety of subjects, religious, politi- 
cal, social, philosophical, and horticultural, with as little of 
method as its author used in taking his morning walks. 



v.] THE TASK. 63 

Nor, as Mr. Benhain has shown, are the reflections, as a 
rule, naturally suggested by the preceding passage. From 
the use of a sofa by the gouty to those who, being free 
from gout, do not need sofas — and so to country walks 
and country life, is hardly a natural transition. It is hard- 
ly a natural transition from the ice palace built by a Rus- 
sian despot, to despotism and politics in general. But if 
Cowper deceives himself in fancying that there is a plan 
or a close connexion of parts, he is right as to the exist- 
ence of a pervading tendency. The praise of retirement 
and of country life as most friendly to piety and virtue, 
is the perpetual refrain of The Task, if not its definite 
theme. From this idea immediately flow the best and 
the most popular passages : those which please apart from 
anything peculiar to a religious school ; those which keep 
the poem alive ; those which have found their way into 
the heart of the nation, and intensified the taste for rural 
and domestic happiness, to which they most winningly 
appeal. In these Cowper pours out his inmost feelings, 
with the liveliness of exhilaration, enhanced by contrast 
with previous misery. The pleasures of the country and 
of home — the walk, the garden, but above all the " intimate 
delights " of the winter evening, the snug parlour, with its 
close-drawn curtains shutting out the. stormy night, the 
steaming and bubbling tea-urn, the cheerful circle, the 
book read aloud, the new*spaper through which we look 
out into the unquiet world — are painted by the writer with 
a heartfelt enjoyment which infects the reader. These 
are not the joys of a hero, nor are they the joys of an 
Alcaeus " singing amidst the clash of arms, or when he 
had moored on the wet shore his storm4ost barque." But 
they are pure joys, and they present themselves in compe- 
tition with those of Ranelagh and the Basset Table, which 



64 COW PER. [chap. 

are not heroic or even masculine, any more than they are 
pure. 

The well-known passages at the opening of The Winter 
Evening are the self-portraiture of a soul in bliss — such 
bliss as that soul could know — and the poet would have 
found it very difficult to depict to himself by the utmost 
effort of his religious imagination any paradise which he 
would really have enjoyed more. 

" Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, 
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, 
And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn 
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups 
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, 
So let us welcome peaceful evening in. 
# * # * 

This folio of four pages, happy work ! 

Which not even critics criticise, that holds 

Inquisitive attention while I read 

Fast bound in chains of silence, which the fair. 

Though eloquent themselves, yet fear to break, 

What is it but a map of busy life. 

Its fluctuations and its vast concerns? 



'Tis pleasant through the loop-holes of retreat 
To peep at such a world. To see the stir 
Of the great Babel and not feel the crowd. 
To hear the roar she sends through all her gates 
At a safe distance, where the dying sound 
Falls a soft murmur on the injured ear. 
Thus sitting and surveying thus at ease 
The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced 
To some secure and more than mortal height, 
That liberates and exempts me from them all. 



v.] THE TASK. 65 

It turns submitted to my view, turns round 
With all its generations; I behold 
The tumult and am still. The sound of war 
Has lost its terrors ere it reaches me, 
Grieves but alarms me not. I mourn the pride 
And avarice that make man a wolf to man, 
Hear the faint echo of those brazen throats 
By which he speaks the language of his heart, 
And sigh, but never tremble at the sound. 
He travels and expatiates, as the bee 
From flower to flower, so he from land to land ; 
The manners, customs, policy of all 
Pay contribution to the store he gleans ; 
He sucks intelligence in every clime, 
And spreads the honey of his deep research 
At his return, a rich repast for me. 
He travels, and I too. I tread his deck, 
Ascend his topmast, through his peering eyes 
Discover countries, with a kindred heart 
Suffer his woes and share in his escapes, 
j While fancy, like the finger of a clock, 
1 Runs the great circuit, and is still at home. 
Oh, winter ! ruler of the inverted year. 
Thy scatter'd hair with sleet like ashes fill'd, 
Thy breath congeal'd upon thy lips, thy cheeks 
Fringed with a beard made white with other snow& 
Than those of age ; thy forehead wrapt in clouds, 
A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne 
A sliding car indebted to no wheels. 
And urged by storms along its slippery way ; 
I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st, 
And dreaded as thou art. Thou hold'st the sun 
A prisoner in the yet undawniug East, 
Shortening his journey between morn and noon. 
And hurrying him impatient of his stay 
Down to the rosy West. But kindly still 



66 COWPER. [chap. 

Compensating his loss with added hours 
Of social converse and instructive ease, 
And gathering at short notice in one group 
<r The family dispersed by daylight and its cares. 
I crown thee king of intimate delights, 
Fireside enjoj^ments, home-born happiness. 
And all the comforts that the lowly roof 
Of uudisturb'd retirement, and the hours 
Of long uninterrupted evening know." 

The writer of The Task also deserves the crown which 
he has himself claimed as a close observer and truthful 
painter of nature. In this respect, he challenges compari- 
son with Thomson. The range of Thomson is far wider ; 
he paints nature in all her moods, Cowper only in a few, 
and those the gentlest, though he has said of himself that 
" he was always an admirer of thunder-storms, even before 
he knew whose voice he heard in them, but especially of 
thunder rolling over the great waters." The great waters 
he had not seen for many years ; he had never, so far as 
we know, seen mountains, hardly even high hills ; his only 
landscape was the flat country watered by the Ouse. On 
the other hand, he is perfectly genuine, thoroughly Eng- 
lish, entirely emancipated from false Arcadianism, the 
yoke of which still sits heavily upon Thomson, whose 
"muse," moreover, is perpetually "wafting" him away 
from the country and the climate which he knows to coun- 
tries and climates which he does not know, and which he 
describes in the style of a prize poem. Cowper's land- 
scapes, too, are peopled with the peasantry of England ; 
Thomson's, with Damons, Palaemons, and Mnsidoras, trick- 
ed out in the sentimental costume of the sham idyl. In 
Thomson, you always find the effort of the artist working 
up a description ; in Cowper, you find no effort ; the scene 



v.] THE TASK. 67 

is simply mirrored on a mind of great sensibility and liigh 
pictorial power. 

"And witness, dear companion of my walks, 
Whose arm this twentieth winter I perceive 
Fast lock'd in mine, with ftleasure such as love, 
Confirm'd by long experience of thy worth 
And well-tried virtues, could alone inspire — 
Witness a joy that thou hast doubled long. 
Thou kuow'st my praise of nature most sincere, 
And that my raptures are not conjured up 
To serve occasions of poetic pomp. 
But genuine, and art partner of them all. 
How oft upon yon eminence our pace 
Has slacken'd to a pause, and we have borne 
The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew. 
While Admiration, feeding at the eye. 
And still uusated, dwelt upon the scene! 
Thence with what pleasure have we just discerned 
The distant plough slow moving, and beside 
His labouring team that swerved not from the track, 
The sturdy swain diminish'd to a boy ! 
Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain 
Of spacious meads, with cattle sprinkled o'er. 
Conducts the eye along his sinuous course 
Delighted. There, fast rooted in their bank. 
Stand, never overlook'd, our favourite elms. 
That screen the herdsman's solitary hut ; 
While far beyond, and overthwart the stream, 
That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale, 
The sloping land recedes into the clouds ; 
Displaying on its varied side the grace 
Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower, 
Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells 
Just undulates upon the listening ear, 
Groves, heaths, and smoking villages, remote. 
4 



eS COWPER. [CHAP. 

Scenes must be beautiful, which, daily viewed, 
Please daily, and whose novelty survives 
Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years — 
Praise justly due to those that I describe." 

This is evidently genuine and spontaneous. We stand 
with Cowper and Mrs. Unwin on the hill in the ruffling 
wind, like them, scarcely conscious that it blows, and feed 
admiration at the eye upon the rich and thoroughly Eng- 
lish champaign that is outspread below. 

"Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds. 
Exhilarate the spirit, and restore 
The tone of languid Nature. Mighty winds, 
That sweep the sMrt of some far-spreading u^ood 
Of ancient growth, maJce music not unlike 
The dash of Ocean on his ivinding shore, 
And lull the spirit while they fill the mind ; 
Unnuraber'd branches waving in the blast. 
And all their leaves fast fluttering, all at once. 
Nor less composure waits upou the roar 
Of distant floods, or on the softer voice 
Of neighbouring fountain, or oi rills that slip 
Through the cleft rock, and chiming as they fall 
Upon loose pehhles, lose themselves at length 
In matted grass that ivith a livelier green 
• Betrays the secret of their silent course. 
Nature iuanimate employs sweet sounds, 
But animated nature sweeter still. 
To soothe and satisfy the human ear. 
Ten thousand warblers cheer the day, and one 
The livelong night : nor these alone, whose notes 
Nice-finger'd Art must emulate in vain, 
But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime 
In still-repeated circles, screaming loud, 
The jay, the pie, and e'en the boding owl 



v.] THE TASK. 69 

That hails the rising moon, have charms for rae. 
Sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh, 
Yet heard in scenes where peace forever reigns, 
And only there, please highly for their sake." 

Affection such as the last lines display for the inharmo- 
nious as well as the harmonious, for the uncomely as well 
as the comely parts of nature, has been made familiar by 
Wordsworth, but it was new in the time of Cowper. Let 
us compare a landscape painted by Pope in his Windsor 
forest, with the lines just quoted, and we shall see the dif- 
ference between the art of Cowper and that of the Augus- 
tan age. 

"Here waving groves a checkered scene display, 
And part admit and part exclude the day. 
As some coy nympli her lover's warm address 
Not quite indulges, nor can quite repress. 
There interspersed in lawns and opening glades 
The trees arise that share each other's shades ; 
Here in full light the russet plains extend, 
There wrapt in clouds, the bluish hills ascend. 
E'en the wild heath displays her purple dyes, 
And midst the desert fruitful fields arise. 
That crowned with tufted trees and springing corn. 
Like verdant isles the sable waste adorn." 

The low Berkshire hills wrapt in clouds on a sunny 
day ; a sable desert in the neighbourhood of Windsor ; 
fruitful fields arising in it, and crowned with tufted trees 
and springing corn — evidently Pope saw all this, not on 
an eminence, in the ruffling wind, but in his study with 
his back to the window, and the Georgics or a translation 
of them before him. 

Here, again, is a. little picture of rural life from the Win- 
ter Morrmig Walk. 



10 COWPER. [chap, 

"The cattle mouru in corners, where the feuce 
Screens them, and seem half-petrified to sleep 
In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait 
Their wonted fodder; not like hungering man. 
Fretful if unsupplied ; but silent, meek, 
And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay. 
He from the stack carves out the accustomed load. 
Deep-plunging, and again deep plunging oft, 
His broad keen knife into the solid mass: 
Smooth as a ivall the upright remnant stands, 
With sucli undeviating and even force 
He severs it away : no needless care, 
Lest storms should overset the leaning pile 
Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight. 
Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcern'd 
The cheerful haunts of man ; to wield the axe 
And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear, 
From morn to eve, his solitary' task. 
Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears 
And tail cropp'd short, half lurcher and half cur. 
His dog attends him. Close behind his heel 
Now creeps he slow ; and now, with many a frisk 
Wide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snow 
With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout; 
Then shakes his powder'd coat, and barks for joy. 
Heedless of all his pranks, the sturdy churl 
Moves right toward the mark ; nor stops for aught, 
But now and then with pressure of his thumb 
To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube. 
That fumes beneath his nose : the trailing cloud 
Streams far behind him, scenting all the air." 

The minutely faithful description of the man carving 
the load of hay out of the stack, and again those of the 
gambolling dog, and the woodman smoking his pipe with 
the stream of smoke trailing behind him, remind us of the 



v.] THE TASK. 71 

touches of minute fidelity in Homer. The same may be 
said of many other passages. 

" The sheepfold here 
Pours out its fleecy tenants o'er the glebe. 
At first, progressive as a stream they seek 
The middle field; hut, scattered by degrees, 
Each to his choice, soon whiten all the land. 
There from the sun-burnt hay-field homeward creeps 
The loaded wain; while lightened of its charge. 
The wain that meets it passes swiftly by ; 
The boorish driver leaning o'er his team 
Vociferous anil impatient of delay." 

A specimen of more imaginative and distinctly poetical 
description is the well-known passage on evening, in writ- 
ing which Cowper would seem to have had Collins in his 
mind. 

" Come, Evening, once again, season of peace ; 
Return, sweet Evening, and continue long! 
Methinks I see thee in the streaky w^est, 
With matron-step slow-moving, while the Night 
Treads on thy sweeping train; one hand employed 
In letting fall the curtain of repose 
On bird and beast, the other charged for man 
With sweet oblivion of the cares of day : 
Not sumptuously adorn'd, nor needing aid, 
Like homely-featured Night, of clustering gems! 
A star or two just twinkling on thy brow 
SuflSces thee ; save that the moon is thine 
No less than hers, not worn indeed on high 
With ostentatious pageantry, but set 
With modest grandeur in thy purple zone. 
Resplendent less, but of an ampler round." 

Beyond this line Cowper does not go, and had no idea 



72 COWPER. [chap. 

of going; lie never thinks of lending a soul to material 
nature as Wordsworth and Shelley do. He is the poetic 
counterpart of Gainsborough, as the great descriptive poets 
of a later and more spiritual day are the counterparts of 
Turner. We have said that Cowper's peasants are genu- 
ine as well as his landscape ; he might have been a more 
exquisite Crabbe if he had turned his mind that way, in- 
stead of writing sermons about a world which to him was 
little more than an abstraction, distorted, moreover, and 
discoloured by his religious asceticism. 



<^ 



" Poor, yet iudustrious, modest, quiet, neat, 
Such claim compassion iu a uij^ht like this, 
And have a friend in every feeling heart. 
Warm'd, while it lasts, by labour, all day long 
They brave the season, and yet find at eve, 
111 clad, and fed but sparely, time to cool. 
The frugal housewife trembles when she lights 
Her scanty stock of brushwood, blazing clear. 
But dying soon, like all terrestrial joys. 
The few small embers left, she nurses well ; 
And, while her infant race, with outspread hands 
And crowded kuees sit cowering o'er the sparks, 
Retires, content to quake, so they be warm'd. 
The man feels least, as more inured than she 
To winter, and the current in his veins 
More briskly moved by his severer toil ; 
Yet he, too, finds his own distress in theirs. 
The taper soon extihgnish'd, which I saw 
Dangled along at the cold finger's end 
Just when the day declined ; and the brown loaf 
Lodged on the shelf, half eaten without sauce 
Of savoury cheese, or butter, costlier still : 
Sleep seems their only refuge : for, alas ! 
Where penury is felt the thought is chained, 



v.] THE TASK. . 73 

And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few ! 
With all this thrift they thrive uot. All the care 
Ingenious Parsimony takes, but just 
Saves the small inventory, bed and stool, 
Skillet, and old carved chest, from public sale. 
They live, and live without extorted alms 
From grudging hands : but other boast have none 
To soothe their honest pride that scorns to beg. 
Nor comfort else, but in their mutual love." 

Here we have the plain, unvarnished record of visitings 
among the poor of Ohiey. The last two lines are simple 
truth as well as the rest. 

" In some passages, especially in the second book, you 
will observe me very satirical." In the second book of 
The Task there are some bitter things about the clergy ; 
and in the passage pourtraying a fashionable preacher, 
there is a touch of satiric vigour, or rather of that power 
of comic description which was one of the writer's gifts. 
But of Cowper as a satirist enough has been said. 

" What there is of a religious cast in the volume I have 
thrown towards the end of it, for two reasons; first, that I 
might not revolt the reader at his entrance ; and, secondly, 
that my best impressions might be made last. Were I to 
write as many volumes as Lope de Vega or Voltaire, not 
one of them would be without this tincture. If the world 
like it not, so much the worse for them. I make all the 
concessions I can, that I may please them, but I will not 
please them at the expense of conscience." The passages 
of The Task penned by conscience, taken together, form a 
lamentably large proportion of the poem. An ordinary 
reader can be carried through them, if at all, only by his 
interest in the history of opinion, or by the companion- 
ship of the writer, who is always present, as Walton is in 



74 COWPER. [chap. 

his Angler, as White is in his Selbourne. Cowper, how- 
ever, even at his worst, is a highly cultivated Methodist : 
if he is sometimes enthusiastic, and possibly superstitious, 
he is never coarse or unctuous. He speaks with contempt 
of "the twang of the conventicle." Even his enthusiasm 
had by this time been somewhat tempered. Just after his 
conversion he used to preach to everybody. He had found 
out, as he tells us himself, that this was a mistake, that 
"the pulpit was for preaching; the garden, the parlour, 
and the walk abroad were for friendly and agreeable con- 
versation." It may have been his consciousness of a cer- 
tain change in himself that deterred him from taking 
Newton into his confidence when he was engaged upon 
The Task. The worst passages are those which betray a 
fanatical antipathy to natural science, especially that in the 
third book (150-190). The episode of the judgment of 
Heaven on the young atheist Misagathus, in the sixth book, 
is also fanatical and repulsive. 

Puritanism had come into violent collision with the tem- 
poral power, and had contracted a character fiercely polit- 
ical and revolutionary. Methodism fought only against un- 
belief, vice, and the coldness of the Establishment; it was 
in no way political, much less revolutionary ; by the recoil 
from the atheism of the French Revolution, its leaders, in- 
cluding Wesley himself, were drawn rather to the Tory side. 
Cowper, we have said, always remained in principle what 
he had been born, a Whig, an unrevolutionary Whig, an 
''Old Whig," to adopt the phrase made canonical by Burke. 

'"Tis liberty alone that gives the flower 
Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume, 
And we are weeds without it. All constraint 
Except what wisdom lays on evil men 
Is evil." 



v.] THE TASK. TS 

The sentiment of these lines, which were familiar and 
dear to Cobden, is tempered by judicious professions of 
loyalty to a king who rules in accordance with the law. 
At one time Cowper was inclined to regard the govern- 
ment of George III. as a repetition of that of Charles L, 
absolutist in the State and reactionary in the Church ; but 
the progress of revolutionary opinions evidently increased 
his loyalty, as it did that of many other Whigs, to the 
good Tory king. We shall presently see, however, that 
the views of the French Revolution itself expressed in his 
letters are wonderfully rational, calm, and free from the 
political panic and the apocalyptic hallucination, both of 
which we should rather have expected to find in him. He 
describes himself to Newton as having seen, since his sec- 
ond attack of madness, " an extramundane character with 
reference to this globe, and though not a native of the 
moon, not made of the dust of this planet." The Evan- 
gelical party has remained down to the present day non- 
political, and in its own estimation extramundane, taking 
part in the affairs of the nation only when some religious 
object was directly in view. In speaking of the family 
of nations, an Evangelical poet is of course a preacher of 
peace and human brotherhood. He has even in some lines 
of Charity^ which also were dear to Cobden, remarkably 
anticipated the sentiment of modern economists respecting 
the influence of free trade in making one nation of mankind. 
The passage is defaced by an atrociously bad simile : — 

"Again — the band of commerce was design'd, 
To associate all the braucbes of mankind, 
And if a boundless plenty be the robe, 
Trade is the golden girdle of the globe. 
Wise to promote whatever end he means, 
God opens fruitful Nature's various scenes, 

F 4* 



T6 COWPER. [CHAP. 

Each climate needs what other climes produce, 
And offers something to the general use ; 
No land but listens to the common call, 
And in return receives supply from all. 
This genial intercourse and mutual aid 
Cheers what were else an universal shade, 
Calls Nature from her ivy-mantled den. 
And softens human rock-work into men." 

Now and then, however, in reading The Task, we come 
across a dash of warlike patriotism which, amidst the gen- 
eral philanthrop}^, surprises and offends the reader's palate, 
like the taste of garlic in our butter. 

An innocent Epicurism, tempered by religious asceticism 
of a mild kind — such is the pliilosophy of The Task, and 
such the ideal embodied in the portrait of the happy man 
with which it concludes. Whatever may be said of the 
religious asceticism, the Epicurism required a corrective to 
redeem it from selfishness and guard it against self-deceit. 
This solitary was serving humanity in the best way he 
could, not by his prayers, as in one rather fanatical pas- 
sage he suggests, but by his literary work; he had need 
also to remember that humanity was serving him. The 
newspaper through which he looks out so complacently 
into the great " Babel," has been printed in the great Babel 
itself, and brought by the poor postman, with his " spat- 
tered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks," to the recluse 
sitting comfortably by his fireside. The " fragrant lymph " 
poured by " the fair" for their companion in his cosy seclu- 
sion, has been brought over the sea by the trader, who must 
encounter the moral dangers of a trader's life, as well as the 
perils of the stormy wave. It is delivered at the door by 

" The waggoner who hears 
The pelting brunt of the tempestuous night, 



T.] THE TASK. 77 

With half-shut eyes and puckered cheeks and teeth 
Presented bare ajjainst the storm ;" 



and whose coarseness and callousness, as he whips his team, 
are the consequences of the hard calling in which he minis- 
ters to the recjuse's pleasure and refinement. If town life 
has its evils, from the city comes all that makes retirement 
comfortable and civilized. Retirement without the city 
would have been bookless, and have fed on acorns. 

Rousseau is conscious of the necessity of some such in- 
stitution as slavery, by way of basis for his beautiful life 
according to nature. The celestial purity and felicity of 
St. Pierre's Paul and Virginia are sustained by the labour 
of two faithful slaves. A weak point of Cowper's philos- 
ophy, taken apart from his own saving activity as a poet, 
betrays itself in a somewhat similar way. 

" Or if the garden with its many cares 
All well repaid demand him, he attends 
The welcome call, conscious how much the hand 
Of lubbard labour needs his watchful eye, 
Oft loitering lazily if not o'erseen ; 
Or misapplying his unskilful strength 
But much performs himself, mo worlis indeed 
That ask robust tough sinews bred to toil, 
Servile employ, but such as may amuse. 
Not tire, demanding rather skill than force." 

We are told in The Task that there is no sin in allow- 
ing our own happiness to be enhanced by contrast with 
the less happy condition of others : if we are doing our 
best to increase the happiness of others, there is none. 
Cowper, as we have said before, was doing this to the ut- 
most of his limited capacity. 



18 COWPER. [chap. 

Both in the Moral Satires and in The Task, there are 
sweeping denunciations of amusements which we now just- 
ly deem innocent, and without which, or something equiv- 
alent to them, the wrinkles on the brow of care could not 
be smoothed, nor life preserved from dulness and morose- 
ness. There i-s fanaticism in this, no doubt ; but in justice 
to the Methodist as well as to the Puritan, let it be remem- 
bered that the stage, card parties, and even dancing, once 
had in them something from which even the most liberal 
morality might recoil. 

In his writings generally, but especially in The Task, 
Cowper, besides being an apostle of virtuous retirement 
and evangelical piety, is, by his general tone, an apostle 
of sensibility. The Task is a perpetual protest not only 
against the fashionable vices and the irreligion but against 
the hardness of the world ; and in a world which worship- 
ped Chesterfield the protest was not needless, nor was it 
ineffective. Among the most tangible characteristics of 
this special sensibility is the tendency of its brimming love 
of humankind to overflow upon animals; and of this there 
are marked instances in some passages of The Task. 

" I would not enter on my list of friends 
(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, 
Yet wanting sensibility) the man 
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm." 

Of Cowper's sentimentalism (to use the word in a neu- 
tral sense), part flowed from his own temperament, part 
was Evangelical, but part belonged to an element which 
was European, which produced the JVouvelle Heloise and 
the Sorroios of Werther, and which was found among the 
Jacobins in sinister companionship with the cruel frenzy 
of the Revolution. Cowper shows us several times that 



v.] THE TASK. 79 

he had been a reader of Rousseau, nor did he fail to pro- 
duce in his time a measure of the same effect which Rous- 
seau produced ; though there have been so many senti- 
mentalists since, and the vein has been so much worked, 
that it is difficult to carry ourselves back in imagination 
to the day in which Parisian ladies could forego balls to 
read the Nouvelle Heloise, or the stony heart of people of 
the world could be melted by The Task. 

In his versification, as in his descriptions, Cowper flat- 
tered himself that he imitated no one. But he manifest- 
ly imitates the softer passages of Milton, whose music he 
compares in a rapturous passage of one of his letters to 
that of a fine organ. To produce melody and variety, he, 
like Milton, avails himself fully of all the resources of a 
composite language. Blank verse confined to short Anglo- 
Saxon words is apt to strike the ear, not like the swell of 
an organ, but like the tinkle of a musical-box. 

The Task made Cowper famous. He was told that he 
had sixty readers at the Hague alone. The interest of his 
relations and friends in him revived, and those of whom 
he had heard nothing for many years emulously renewed 
their connexion. Colman and Thurlow reopened their cor- 
respondence with him, Colman writing to him "like a 
brother." Disciples — young Mr. Rose, for instance — came 
to sit at his feet. Complimentary letters were sent to 
him, and poems submitted to his judgment. His portrait 
was taken by famous painters. Literary lion-hunters be- 
gan to fix their eyes upon him. His renown spread even 
to Olney. The clerk of All Saints', Northampton, came 
over to ask him to write the verses annually appended to 
the bill of mortality for that parish. Cowper suggested 
that " there were several men of genius in Northampton, 
particularly Mr. Cox, the statuary, who, as everybody knew. 



80 COWPER. [chap. v. 

was a first-rate maker of verses." "Alas!" replied the 
clerk, " I have heretofore borrowed help from him, but he 
is a gentleman of so much reading that the people of our 
town cannot understand him." The compliment was irre- 
sistible, and for seven years the author of The Task wrote 
the mortuary verses for All Saints', Northampton. Amuse- 
ment, not profit, was Cowper's aim ; he rather rashly gave 
away his copyright to his publisher, and his success does 
not seem to have brought him money in a direct way ; but 
it brought him a pension of 300/. in the end. In the 
meantime it brought him presents, and among them an 
annual gift of 50/. from an anonymous hand, the first in- 
stalment being accompanied by a pretty snuff-box orna- 
mented with a picture of the three hares. From the grace- 
fulness of the gift, Southey infers that it came from a 
woman, and he conjectures that the woman was Theodora. 



CHAPTER VI. 

SHORT POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS. 

The Task was not quite finished when the influence which 
had inspired it was withdrawn. Among the little mys- 
teries and scandals of literaiy history is the rupture be- 
tween Cowper and Lady Austen. Soon after the com- 
mencement of their friendship there had been a "fracas," 
of which Cowper gives an account in a letter to William 
Unwin. " My letters have already apprised you of that 
close and intimate connexion that took place between the 
lady you visited in Queen Anne Street and us. Nothing 
could be more promising, though sudden in the com- 
mencement. She treated us with as much unreservedness 
of communication, as if we had been born in the same 
house and educated together. At her departure, she her- 
self proposed a correspondence, and, because writing does 
not agree with your mother, proposed a correspondence 
with me. This sort of intercourse had not been long 
maintained before I discovered, by some slight intimations 
of it, that she had conceived displeasure at somewhat I 
had written, though I cannot now recollect it; conscious 
of none but the most upright, inoffensive intentions, I yet 
apologized for the passage in question, and the flaw was 
healed again. Our correspondence after this proceeded 
smoothly for a considerable time ; but at length, having 
had repeated occasion to observe that she expressed a sort 



82 COWPER. [chap. 

of romantic idea of our merits, and built such expectations 
of felicity upon our friendship, as we were sure that noth- 
ing human could possibly answer, I wrote to remind her 
that we were mortal, to recommend her not to think more 
highly of us than the subject would warrant, and intimat- 
ing that when we embellish a creature with colors taken 
from our own fancy, and, so adorned, admire and praise it 
beyond its real merits, we make it an idol, and have noth- 
ing to expect in the end but that it will deceive our 
hopes, and that we shall derive nothing from it but a 
painful conviction of our error. Your mother heard me 
read the letter ; she read it herself, and honoured it with 
her warm approbation. But it gave mortal offence ; it 
received, indeed, an answer, but such an one as I could by 
no means reply to; and there ended (for it was impossible 
it should ever be renewed) a friendship that bid fair to be 
lasting; being formed with a woman whose seeming sta- 
bility of temper, whose knowledge of the world and great 
experience of its folly, but, above all, whose sense of relig- 
ion and seriousness of mind (for with all that gaiety she 
is a great thinker) induced us both, in spite of that cau- 
tious reserve that marked our characters, to trust her, to 
love and value her, and to open our hearts for her recep- 
tion. It may be necessary to a.dd that, by her own desire, 
I wrote to her under the assumed relation of a brother, 
and she to me as my sister. Ceu fumus in aurasy It is 
impossible to read this without suspecting that there was 
more of " romance " on one side than there was either of 
romance or of consciousness of the situation on the other. 
On that occasion the reconciliation, though " impossible," 
took place, the lady sending, by way of olive branch, a 
pair of ruffles, which it was known she had begun to work 
before the quarrel. The second rupture was final. Hay- 



VI.] SHORT POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS. 83 

ley, who treats the matter with sad solemnity, tells us that 
Cowpcr's letter of farewell to Lady Austen, as she assured 
him herself, was admirable, though unhickily, not being 
gratified by it at the time, she had thrown it into the fire. 
Cowper has himself given us, in a letter to Lady Hesketh, 
with reference to the final rupture, a version of the whole 
affair: — "There came a lady into this country, by name 
and title Lady Austen, the widow of the late Sir Robert 
Austen. At first she lived with her sister about a mile 
from Olney ; but in a few weeks took lodgings at the Vic- 
arage here. Between the Vicarage and the back of our 
house are interposed our garden, an orchard, and the gar-- 
den belonging to the Vicarage, She had lived much in 
France, was very sensible, and had infinite vivacity. She • 
took a great liking to us, and we to her. She had been 
used to a great deal of company, and we, fearing that she 
would feel such a transition into silent retirement irk- 
some, contrived to give her our agreeable company often. 
Becoming continually more and more intimate, a practice 
at length obtained of our dining with each other alter- 
nately every day, Sundays excepted. In order to facili- 
tate our communication, we made doors in the two gar- 
den-walls aforesaid, by which means we considerably short- 
ened the way from one house to the other, and could 
meet when we pleased without entering the town at all — a 
measure the rather expedient, because the town is abomi- 
nably dirty, and she kept no carriage. On her first settle- 
ment in our neighbourhood, I made it my own particular 
business (for at that time I was not employed in writing, 
having published my first volume and not begun my sec- 
ond) to pay my devoirs to her ladyship every morning at 
eleven. Customs very soon became laws. I began The 
Tash, for she was the lady who gave me the Sofa for a 



84 COWPER. [chap. 

subject. Being once engaged in the work, I began to feel 
the inconvenience of my morning attendance. We had 
seldom breakfasted ourselves till ten ; and the intervening 
hour was all the time I could find in the whole day for 
writing, and occasionally it would happen that the half 
of that hour was all that I could secure for the purpose. 
But there was no remedy. Lono- usaa:e had made that 
which was at first optional a point of good manners, and 
consequently of necessity, and I was forced to neglect The 
Task to attend upon the Muse who had inspired the sub- 
ject. But she had ill-health, and before I had quite fin- 
ished the work was obliged to repair to Bristol." Evi- 
dently this was not the whole account of the matter, or 
there would have been no need for a formal letter of fare- 
well. We are very sorry to find the revered Mr. Alexan- 
der Knox saying, in his correspondence with Bishop Jebb, 
that he had a severer idea of Lady Austen than he should 
wish to put into writing for publication, and that he al- 
most suspected she was a very artful woman. On the 
other hand, the unsentimental Mr. Scott is reported to 
have said, " Who can be surprised that two women should 
be continually in the society of one man and not quarrel, 
sooner or later, wdth each other?" Considering what Mrs. 
Unwin had been to Cowper, and what he had been to her, 
a little jealousy on her part would not have been highly 
criminal. But, as South ey observes, we shall soon see two 
women continually in the society of this very man with- 
out quarrelling with each other. That Lady Austen's be- 
haviour to Mrs. Unwin was in the highest degree affec- 
tionate, Cowper has himself assured us. Whatever the 
cause may have been, this bird of paradise, having alight- 
ed for a moment in Olney, took wing and was seen no 
more. 



VI.] SHORT POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS. Co 

Her place as a companion was supplied, and more than 
supplied, by Lady Hesketh, like her a woman of the world, 
and almost as bright and vivacious, but with more sense 
and stability of character, and who, moreover, could be 
treated as a sister without any danger of misunderstanding. 
The renewal of the intercourse between Cowper and the 
merry and ajffectionate play-fellow of his early days, had 
been one of the best fruits borne to him by Tlte Task, or 
perhaps we should rather say by John Gilpin; for on read- 
ing that ballad she first became aware that her cousin had 
emerged from the dark seclusion of his truly Christian 
happiness, and might again be capable of intercourse with 
her sunny nature. Full of real happiness for Cowper were, 
her visits to Olney ; the announcement of her coming 
threw him into a trepidation of delight. And how was 
this new rival received by Mrs. Unwin ? " There is some- 
thing," says Lady Hesketh, in a letter which has been al- 
ready quoted, " truly affectionate and sincere in Mrs. Un- 
win's manner. No one can express more heartily than 
she does her joy to have me at Olney ; and as this must 
be for his sake, it is an additional proof of her regard and 
esteem for him." She could even cheerfully yield prece- 
dence in trifles, which is the greatest trial of all. " Our 
friend," says Lady Hesketh, " delights in a large table and 
a large chair. There are two of the latter comforts in my 
parlour. I am sorry to say that he and I always spread 
ourselves out in them, leaving poor Mrs. Unwin to find all 
the comfort she can in a small one, half as high again as 
ours, and considerably harder than marble. However, she 
protests it is what she likes, that she prefers a high chair 
to a low one, and a hard to a soft one ; and I hope she 
is sincere ; indeed, I am persuaded she is." She never 
gave the slightest reason for doubting hev sincerity ; so 



86 COWPER. [chap. 

Mr. Scott's coarse theory of the " two women " falls to the 
ground ; though, as Lady Hesketh was not Lady Austen, 
room is still left for the more delicate and interesting hy- 
pothesis. 

By Lady Hesketh's care Cowper was at last taken out 
of the "well" at Olney and transferred, with his partner, 
to a house at Weston, a place in the neighbourhood, but 
on higher ground, more cheerful, and in better air. The 
house at Weston belonged to Mr. Throckmorton, of Wes- 
ton Hall, with whom and Mrs. Throckmorton, Cowper had 
become so intimate that they were already his Mr. and 
Mrs. Frog. It is a proof of his freedom from fanatical 
bitterness that he was rather drawn to them by their being 
Roman Catholics, and having suffered rude treatment from 
the Protestant boors of the neighbourhood. AVeston Hall 
had its grounds, with the colonnade of chestnuts, the 
"sportive light" of which still "dances" on the pages of 
The Task ; with the Wilderness, — 

" Whose well-rolled walks, 
With curvature of slow and easy sweep, 
Deception innocent, give ample space 
To narrow bounds — " 

with the Grove, — 

" Between the upright shafts of whose tall elms 
We may discern the thresher at his task, 
Thump after thump resounds the constant flail 
That seems to swing uncertain, and yet falls 
Full on the destined ear. Wide flies the chaff, 
The rustling straw sends up a fragrant mist 
Of atoms, sparkling in the noonday beam." 

A pretty little vignette, which the threshing-machine has 
now made antique. There were ramblings, picnics, and 



VI.] SHORT POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS. 87 

little dinner-parties. Lady Hesketh kept a carriage. 
Gayhurst, the seat of Mr. Wright, was visited, as well as 
Weston Hall ; the life of the lonely pair was fast becom- 
ing social. The Rev. John Newton was absent in the 
flesh, but he was present in the spirit, thanks to the tattle 
of Olney. To show that he was, he addressed to Mrs. TJn- 
win a letter of remonstrance on the serious chano;e which 
had taken place in the habits of his spiritual children. It 
was answered by her companion, who in repelling the cen- 
sure mingles the dignity of self-respect with a just appre- 
ciation of the censor's motives, in a style which showed 
that although he was sometimes mad, he was not a fool. 

Having succeeded in one great poem, Cowper thought 
of writing another, and several subjects were started — The 
Mediterranean, The Four Ages of Man, Yardley Oak. 
The Mediterranean would not have suited him well if it 
was to be treated historically, for of history he was even 
more ignorant than most of those who have had the bene- 
fit of a classical education, being capable of believing that 
the Latin element of our language had come in with the 
Roman conquest. Of the Four Ages he wrote a frag- 
ment. Of Yardley Oak he wrote the opening ; it was, 
apparently, to have been a survey of the countries in con- 
nexion with an immemorial oak which stood in a neigh- 
bouring chace. But he was forced to say that the mind 
of man was not a fountain but a cistern, and his was a 
broken one. He had expended his stock of materials for 
a long poem in The Task. 

These, the sunniest days of Cowper's life, however, gave 
birth to many of those short poems which are perhaps 
his best, certainly his most popular works, and wliicli will 
probably keep his name alive when The Task is read only 
in extracts. The Loss of the Royal George, The Solitude 



^ 



88 COWPER. [chap. 

of Alexander Selkirk, The Poplar Field, The Shrubbery, 
the Lines on a Young Lady, and those To Mary, will hold 
their places forever in the treasury of English Lyrics. In 
its humble way The Needless Alarm is one of the most 
perfect of human compositions. Cowper had reason to 
complain of ^feop for having written his fables before 
him. One great charm of these little pieces is their per- 
fect spontaneity. Many of them were never published ; 
and generally they have the air of being the simple effu- 
sions of the moment, gay or sad. When Cowper was in 
good spirits hi? joy, intensified by sensibility and past suf- 
fering, played like a fountain of light on all the little in- 
cidents of his quiet life. An ink-glass, a flatting mill, a 
halibut served up for dinner, the killing of a snake in the 
garden, the arrival of a friend wet after a journey, a cat 
shut up in a drawer, sufficed to elicit a little jet of poetical 
delight, the highest and brightest jet of all being John Gil- 
pin. Lady Austen's voice and touch still faintly live in 
two or three pieces which were written for her harpsichord. 
Some of the short poems, on the other hand, are poured 
from the darker urn, and the finest of them all is the sad- 
dest. There is no need of illustrations unless it be to call 
attention to a secondary quality less noticed than those of 
more importance. That which used to be specially called 
" wit," the faculty of ingenious and unexpected combina- 
tion, such as is shown in the similes of Hadibras, was pos- 
sessed by Cowper in large measure. 

"A friendship that in frequent fits 
Of controversial rage emits 

The sparks of disputation, 
Like hand-iu-hand insurance plates, 
Most unavoidably creates 

The thought of couflaffratiou. 



VI.] SHORT POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS. 89 

*' Some fickle creatures Tboast a soul 
True as a ueeclle to the pole, 

Their humour yet so various — 
They manifest their whole life through 
The needle's deviations too, 
Their love is so precarious. 

"The great and small hut rarely meet 
On terms of amity complete ; 

Pleheians must surrender. 
And yield so much to nohle folk, 
It is combining fire with smoke, 

Obscurity with splendour. 

" Some are so placid and serene 
(As Irish bogs are always green), 

They sleep secure from waking ; 
And are indeed a bog, that bears 
Your unparticipated cares 

Unmoved and without quaking. 

" Courtier and patriot cannot mix 
Their heterogeneous politics 

Without an effervescence. 
Like that of salts with lemon juice. 
Which does not yet like that produce 

A friendly coalescence." 

Faint presages of Byron are heard in such a poem a, 
The Shrubbery ; and of Wordsworth in such a poem as tliat 
To a Young Lady. But of the lyrical depth and passion 
of the great Revolution poets Cowper is wholly devoid. 
His soul was stirred by no movement so mighty, if it were 
even capable of the impulse. Tenderness he has, and 
pathos as well as playfulness ; he has unfailing grace and 
ease ; he has clearness like that of a trout-stream. Fash- 



90 COWPEK. [chap. 

ions, even our fashions, change. The more metaphysical 
poetry of our time has indeed too much in it, besides the 
metaphysics, to be in any danger of being ever laid on the 
shelf with the once admired conceits of Cowley ; yet it 
may one day in part lose, while the easier and more limpid 
kind of poetry may in part regain, its charm. 

The opponents of the Slave Trade tried to enlist this 
winning voice in the service of their cause. Cowper dis- 
liked the task, but he wrote two or three anti-Slave-Trade 
ballads. The Slave Trader in the Dumps, with its ghastly 
array of horrors dancing a jig to a ballad metre, justifies 
the shrinking of an artist from a subject hardly fit for art. 

If the cistern which had supplied The Task was ex- 
hausted, the rill of occasional poems still ran freely, fed by 
a spring which, so long as life presented the most trivial 
object or incident, could not fail. Why did not Cowper 
go on writing these charming pieces, which he evidently 
produced with the greatest facility ? Instead of this, he 
took, under an evil star, to translating Homer. The trans- 
lation of Homer into verse is the Polar Expedition of lit- 
erature, always failing, yet still desperately renewed. Ho- 
mer defies modern reproduction. His primeval simplicity 
is a dew of the dawn which can never be re-distilled. His 
primeval savagery is almost equally unpresentable. What 
civilized poet can don the barbarian sufl[iciently to revel, or 
seem to revel, in the ghastly details of carnage, in hideous 
wounds described with surgical gusto, in the butchery of 
captives in cold blood, or even in those particulars of the 
shambles and the spit which to the troubadour of barba- 
rism seem as delightful as the images of the harvest and 
the vintage? Poetry can be translated into poetry only 
by taking up the ideas of the original into the mind of 
the translator, which is very difficult when the translator 



Ti.] SHORT POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS. 91 

and the original are separated by a gulf of thought and 
feeling, and when the gulf is very wide, becomes impossi- 
ble. There is nothing for it in the case of Homer but a 
prose translation. Even in prose to find perfect equiva- 
lents for some of the Homeric phrases is not easy. What- 
ever the chronological date of the Homeric poems may be. 
their political and psychological date may be pretty well 
fixed. Politically they belong, as the episode of Thersites 
shows, to the rise of democracy and to its first collision 
with aristocracy, which Homer regards with the feelings 
of a bard who sang in aristocratic halls. Psychologically 
they belong to the time when, in ideas and language, the 
moral was just disengaging itself from the physical. In 
the wail of Andromache, for instance, adinon epos, which 
Pope improves into " sadly dear," and Cowper, with bet- 
ter taste at all events, renders "precious," is really semi- 
physical, and scarcely capable of exact translation. It bo- 
longs to an unreproducible past, like the fierce joy which, 
in the same wail, bursts from the savage woman in the 
midst of her desolation at the thought of the numbers 
whom her husband's hands had slain. Cowper had studied 
the Homeric poems thoroughly in his youth ; he knew 
them so well that he was able to translate them, not very 
incorrectly with only the help of a Clavis; he understood 
their peculiar qualities as well as it was possible for a read- 
er without the historic sense to do ; he had compared 
Pope's translation carefully with the original, and had de- 
cisively noted the defects which make it not a version of 
Homer, but a periwigged epic of the Augustan age. In 
his own translation he avoids Pope's faults, and he pre- 
serves at least the dignity of the original, w^hile his com- 
mand of language could never fail him, nor could he ever 
lack the guidance of good taste. But we well know 
G 5 



92 COWPER. [chap. 

where he will be at his best. We turn at once to such 
passages as the description of Calypso's Isle. 

" Alighting on Pieria, doM^n he (Hermes) stooped 
To Ocean, and the billows lightly skimmed 
In form a sea-mew, such as in the bays 
Tremeudons of the barren deep her food 
Seeking, dips oft in brine her ample wing. 
In such disguise o'er many a wave he rode, 
But reaching, now, that isle remote, forsook 
The azure deep, and at the spacious grove 
Where dwelt the amber-tressed nymph arrived 
Found her within. A fire on all the hearth 
Blazed sprightly, and, afar diffused, the scent 
Of smooth-split cedar and of cypress-wood 
Odorous, burning cheered the happy isle. 
She, busied at the loom and plying fast 
Her golden shuttle, with melodious voice 
Sat chanting there ; a grove on either side. 
Alder and poplar, and the redolent branch 
Wide-spread of cypress, skirted dark the cave 
Where many a bird of broadest piuion built 
Secure her nest, the owl, the kite, and daw, 
Long-toiigned frequenters of the sandy shores. 
A garden vine luxuriant on all sides 
Mantled the spacious cavern, cluster-hung 
Profuse ; four fountains of serenest lymjjh. 
Their sinuous course pursuing side by side, ' 
Strayed all around, and everywhere appeared 
Meadows of softest verdure purpled o'er 
W^ith violets ; it was a scene to fill 
A God from heaven with wonder and delight." 

There are faults in this, and even blunders, notably in 
the natural history ; and " serenest lymph " is a sad de- 
parture from Homeric simplicity. Still, on the whole, the 



VI.] SHORT POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS. 93 

passage in tlie translation charms, and its charm is tolera- 
bly identical with that of the original. In. more martial 
and stirring passages the failure is more signal, and here 
especially we feel that if Pope's rhyming couplets are sor- 
ry equivalents for the Homeric hexameter, blank verse is 
superior to them only in a negative way. The real equiv- 
alent, if any, is the romance metre of Scott, parts of whose 
poems, notably the last canto of Marmion and some pas- 
sages in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, are about the most 
Homeric things in our language. Cowper brought such 
poetic gifts to his work that his failure might have de- 
terred others from making the same hopeless attempt. 
But a failure his work is ; the translation is no more a 
counterpart of the original, than the Ouse creeping through 
its meadows is the counterpart of the ^gean rolling be- 
fore a fresh wind and under a bright sun. Pope delights 
school-boys ; Cowper delights nobody, though, on the rare 
occasions when he is taken from the shelf, he commen.ds 
himself, in a certain measure, to the taste and judgment of 
cultivated men. 

In his translations of Horace, both those from the Sat- 
ires and those from the Odes, Cowper succeeds far better. 
Horace requires in his translator little of the fire which 
Cowper lacked. In the Odes he requires grace, in the 
Satires urbanity and playfulness, all of which Cowper had 
in abundance. Moreover, Horace is separated from us by 
no intellectual gulf. He belongs to what Dr. Arnold call- 
ed the modern period of ancient history. Nor is Cowper's 
translation of part of the eighth book of Virgil's ^neid 
bad, in spite of the heaviness of the blank verse. Virgil, 
like Horace, is within his intellectual range. 

As though a translation of the whole of the Homeric 
poems had not been enough to bury his finer faculty, and 



\ 
> 



94 COWPER. [chap. vi. 

prevent him from giving us any more of the minor poems, 
the publishers seduced him into undertaking an edition 
of Milton, which was to eclipse all its predecessors in splen- 
dour. Perhaps he may have been partly entrapped by a 
chivalrous desire to rescue his idol from the disparagement 
cast on it by the tasteless and illiberal Johnson. The proj- 
ect, after weighing on his mind and spirits for some time, 
was abandoned, leaving as its traces only translations of 
Milton's Latin poems, and a few notes on Paradise Lost, in 
which there is too much of religion, too little of art. 

Lady Hesketh had her eye on the Laureateship, and 
probably with that view persuaded her cousin to write 
loyal verses on the recovery of George IIL He wrote 
the verses, but to the hint of the Laureateship he said, 
*' Heaven guard my brows from the wreath you mention, 
whatever wreaths beside may hereafter adorn them. It 
would be a leaden extinguisher clapt on my genius, and I 
should never more produce a line worth reading." Be- 
sides, was he not already the mortuary poet of All Saints, 
Northampton ? 



CHAPTER YII. 

THE LETTERS. 

SouTHEY, no mean judge in such a matter, calls Cowpet \ 
the best of English letter - writers. If the first place is / 
shared with him by any one it is by Byron, rather than ) 
by Gray, whose letters are pieces of fine writing, addressed \ 
to literary men, or Horace Walpole, whose letters are me- ] 
moirs, the English counterpart of St. Simon. The letters 
both of Gray and Walpole are manifestly written for pub- 
lication. Those of Cowper have the true epistolary charm. 
They are conversation, perfectly artless, and at the same 
time autobiography, perfectly genuine ; whereas all formal 
autobiography is cooked. They are the vehicles of the 
writer's thoughts and feelings, and the mirror of his life. 
We have the strongest proofs that they were not written 
for publication. In many of them there are outpourings 
of wretchedness which could not possibly have been in- 
tended for any heart but that to which they were ad- 
dressed, while others contain medical details which ijo 
one would have thought of presenting to the public eye. 
Some, we know, were answers to letters received but a 
moment before ; and Southey says that the manuscripts 
are very free from erasures. Though Cowper kept a note- 
book for subjects, which no doubt were scarce with him, 
it is manifest that he did not premeditate. Grace of form 



96 • COWPER. [chap. 

he never lacks, but this was a part of his nature, improved 
by his classical training. The character and the thoughts 
presented are those of a recluse who was sometimes a hyp- 
ochondriac; the life is life at Olney. But simple self- 
revelation is always interesting, and a garrulous playful- 
ness with great happiness of expression can lend a certain 
charm even to things most trivial and commonplace. 
There is also a certain pleasure in being carried back to 
the quiet days before railways and telegraphs, when peo- 
ple passed their whole lives on the same spot, and life 
moved always in the same tranquil round. In truth, it is 
to such days that letter-writing, as a species of literature, 
belongs ; telegrams and postal cards have almost killed it 
now. 

The large collection of Cowper's letters is probably sel- 
dom taken from the shelf; and the "Elegant Extracts" 
select those letters which are most sententious, and there- 
fore least characteristic. Two or three specimens of the 
other style may not be unwelcome or needless as elements 
of a biographical sketch ; though specimens hardly do jus- 
tice to a series of which the charm, such as it ^s, is evenly 
diffused, not gathered into centres of brilliancy like 'Ma- 
dame de Sevigne's letter on the Orleans Marriage. Here 
is a letter written in the highest spirits to Lady Hesketh. 

"Olney, Feb. 9th, 1786. 
" My dearest Cousin, — I have been impatient to tell 
you that I am impatient to see you again. Mrs. Unwin 
partakes with me in all my feelings upon this subject, and 
longs also to see you. I should have told you so by the 
last post, but have been so completely occupied by this 
tormenting specimen, that it was impossible to do it. I 
sent the General a letter on Monday, that would distress 



VII.] THE LETTERS. 97 

and alarm him ; I sent him another yesterday, that will, I 
hope, quiet him again. Johnson has apologized very civ- 
illy for the multitude of his friend's strictures; and his 
friend has promised to confine himself in future to a com- 
parison of me with the original, so that, I doubt not, we 
shall jog on merrily together. And now, my dear, let me 
tell you once more that your kindness in promising us a 
visit has charmed us both. I shall see you again. I shall 
hear your voice. We shall take walks together. I will 
show you my prospects — the hovel, the alcove, the Ouse and 
its banks, everything that I have described. I anticipate 
the pleasure of those days not very far distant, and feel a 
part of it at this moment. Talk not of an inn ! Mention 
it not for your life ! We have never had so many visit- 
ors but we could easily accommodate them all ; though we 
have received TJnwin, and his wife, and his sister, and his 
son all at once. My dear, I will not let you come till the 
end of May, or beginning of June, because before that 
time my greenhouse will not be ready to receive us, and 
it is the only pleasant room belonging to us. When the 
plants go out, we go in. I line it with mats, and spread 
the floor with mats ; and there you shall sit with a bed of 
mignonette at your side, and a hedge of honeysuckles, 
roses, and jasmine ; and I will make you a bouquet of myr- 
tle every day. Sooner than the time I mention the coun- 
try will not be in complete beauty. 

"And I will tell you what you shall find at your first 
entrance. Imprimis, as soon as you have entered the ves- 
tibule, if you cast a look on either side of you, you shall 
see on the right hand a box of my making. It is the box 
in which have been lodged all my hares, and in which 
lodges Puss at present; but he, poor fellow, is worn out 
with age, and promises to die before you can see him. 



98 COWPER. [chap. 

On the liglit liand stands a cupboard, the work of the 
same author; it was once a dove-cage, but I transformed 
it. Opposite to you stands a table, which I also made ; 
but a merciless servant having scrubbed it until it became 
paralytic, it serves no purpose now but of ornament ; and 
all my clean shoes stand under it. On the left hand, at 
the further end of this superb vestibule, you will find the 
door of the parlour, into which I will conduct you, and 
where I will introduce you to Mrs. Unwin, unless we 
should meet her before, and where we will be as happy 
as the day is long. Order yourself, my cousin, to the 
Swan at Newport, and there you shall find me ready to 
conduct you to Olney. 

" My dear, I have told Homer what you say about casks 
and urns, and have asked him whether he is sure that it is 
a cask in which Jupiter keeps his wine. He swears that 
it is a cask, and that it will never be anything better than 
a cask to eternity. So, if the god is content with it, we 
must even wonder at his taste, and be so too. 

" Adieu ! my dearest, dearest cousin. W. C." 

Here, by way of contrast, is a letter written in the low- 
est spirits possible to Mr. Newton. It displays literary 
grace inalienable even in the depths of hypochondria. It 
also shows plainly the connexion of hypochondria with 
the weather. January was a month to the return of 
which the sufferer always looked forward with dread as a 
mysterious season of evil. It was a season, especially at 
Olney, of thick fog combined with bitter frosts. To Cow- 
per this state of the atmosphere appeared the emblem of 
his mental state ; we see in it the cause. At the close the 
letter slides from spiritual despair to the worsted-merchant, 
showing that, as we remarked before, the language of de- 



VII.] THE LETTERS. 99 

spondency had become habitual, and does not always flow- 
fro m a soul really in the depths of woe. 

To THE Rev. John Newton. 

" Jan. 13th, 1784. 

" My DEAR Friend, — I too have taken leave of the old 
year, and parted with it just when you did, but with very 
different sentiments and feelings upon the occasion. I 
looked back upon all the passages and occurrences of it, 
as a traveller looks back upon a wilderness through which 
he has passed with weariness and sorrow of heart, reaping 
no other fruit of his labour than the poor consolation that, 
dreary as the desert was, he has left it all behind him. 
The traveller would find even this comfort consideraoiy les- 
sened if, as soon as he had passed one wilderness, another 
of equal length, and equally desolate, should expect him. 
In this particular, his experience and mine would exactly 
tally. I should rejoice, indeed, that the old year is over 
and gone, if I had not every reason to prophesy a new one 
similar to it. 

" The new year is already old in my account. I am not, 
indeed, sufficiently second-sighted to be able to boast by 
anticipation an acquaintance with the events of it yet un- 
born, but rest convinced that, be they what they may, not 
one of them comes a messenger of good to me. If even 
death itself should be of the number, he is no friend of 
mine. It is an alleviation of the woes even of an unen- 
lightened man, that he can wish for death, and indulge a 
hope, at least, that in death he shall find deliverance. But, 
loaded as my life is with despair, I have no such comfort 
as would result from a supposed probability of better 
things to come, were it once ended. For, more unhappy 
than the traveller with whom I set out, pass through what 
5* 



100 COWPER. [chap. 

difficulties I may, tlirough whatever dangers and afflictions, 
I am not a whit nearer the home, unless a dungeon may be / 
called so. This is no very agreeable theme ; but in so great 
a dearth of subjects to write upon, and especially impress- 
ed as I am at this moment with a sense of my own condi- 
tion, I could choose no other. The weather is an exact 
emblem of my mind in its present state. A thick fog en- 
velopes everything, and at the same time it freezes intense- 
ly. You will tell me that this cold gloom will be succeed- 
ed by a cheerful spring, and endeavour to encourage me to 
hope for a spiritual change resembling it ; — but it will be 
lost labour. Nature revives again ; but a soul once slain 
lives no more. The hedge that has been apparently dead, 
is not so ; it will burst into leaf and blossom at the ap- 
pointed time ; but no such time is appointed for the stake 
that stands in it. It is as dead as it seems, and will prove 
itself no dissembler. The latter end of next month will 
complete a period of eleven years in which I have spoken 
no other language. It is a long time for a man, whose 
eyes were once opened, to spend in darkness ; long enough 
to make despair an inveterate habit ; and such it is in me. 
My friends, I know, expect that I shall see yet again. 
They think it necessary to the existence of divine truth, 
that he who once had possession of it should never finally 
lose it. I admit the solidity of this reasoning in every 
case but my own. And why not in my own? For causes 
which to them it appears madness to allege, but which 
rest upon ray mind with a weight of immovable convic- 
tion. If I am recoverable, why am I thus? — why crippled 
and made useless in the Church, just at that time of life 
when, my judgment and experience being matured, I might 
be most useful ? — why cashiered and turned out of service, 
till, according to the course of nature, there is not life 



VII.] THE LETTERS. 101 

enough left in me to make amends for the years I have 
lost — till there is no reasonable hope left that the fruit can 
ever pay the expense of the fallow ? I forestall the an- 
swer : — God's ways are mysterious, and He giveth no ac- 
count of His matters — an answer that would serve my 
purpose as well as theirs to use it. There is a mystery in 
my destruction, and in time it shall be explained. 

" I am glad you have found so much hidden treasure ; 
and Mrs. Unwin desires me to tell you that you did her 
no more than justice in believing that she would rejoice in 
it. It is not easy to surmise the reason why the reverend 
doctor, your predecessor, concealed it. Being a subject of 
a free government, and I suppose full of the divinity most 
in fashion, he could not fear lest his riches should expose 
him to persecution. Nor can 1 suppose that he held it 
any disgrace for a dignitary of the Church to be wealthy, 
at a time when Churchmen in general spare no pains to be- 
come so. But the wisdom of some men has a droll sort 
of knavishness in it, much like that of a magpie, who hides 
what he finds with a deal of contrivance, merely for the 
pleasure of doing it. 

" Mrs. Unwin is tolerably well. She wishes me to add 
that she shall be obliged to Mrs. Newton, if, when an op- 
portunity offers, she will give the worsted-merchant a jog. 
We congratulate you that Eliza does not grow worse, 
which I know you expected would be the case in the 
course of the winter. Present our love to her. Remem- 
ber us to Sally Johnson, and assure yourself that we re- 
main as warmly as ever, Yours, W. C. 

" M. U." 

In the next specimen we shall see the faculty of impart- 
ing interest to the most trivial incident by the way of tell- 



102 COWPEK. [chap. 

ing it. The incident in this case is one which also forms 
the subject of the little poem called The Coluhriad. 

To THE Rev. William Unwin. 

"Aug. 3rd, 1782. 

" My dear Friend, — Entertaining some hope that Mr. 
Newton's next letter would furnish me with the means of 
satisfying your inquiry on the subject of Dr. Johnson's 
opinion, I have till now delayed my answer to your last ; 
but the information is not yet come, Mr. Newton having 
intermitted a week more than usual since his last writing. 
When I receive it, favourable or not, it shall be communi- 
cated to you ; but I am not very sanguine in my expecta- 
tions from that quarter. Very learned and very critical 
heads are hard to please. He may, perhaps, treat me with 
levity for the sake of my subject and design, but the com- 
position, I think, will hardly escape his censure. Though 
all doctors may not be of the same mind, there is one doc- 
tor at least, whom I have lately discovered, my professed 
admirer. He too, like Johnson, was with difficulty per- 
suaded to read, having an aversion to all poetry except 
the Night Thoughts; which, on a certain occasion, when 
being confined on board a ship, he had no other employ- 
ment, he got by heart. He was, however, prevailed upon, 
and read me several times over ; so that if my volume had 
sailed with him, instead of Dr. Young's, I might, perhaps, 
have occupied that shelf in his memory which he then al- 
lotted to the Doctor : his name is Renny, and he lives at 
Newport Pagnel. 

" It is a sort of paradox, but it is true : we are never 
more in danger than when we think ourselves most secure, 
nor in reality more, secure than when we seem to be most 



VII.] THE LETTERS. 103 

in danger. Both sides of this apparent contradiction were 
lately verified in my experience. Passing from the green- 
house to the barn, I saw three kittens (for we have so 
many in our retinue) looking with fixed attention at some- 
thing, which lay on the threshold of a door, coiled up. I 
took but little notice of them at first; but a loud hiss en- 
gaged me to attend more closely, when behold — a viper ! 
the largest I remember to have seen, rearing itself, darting 
its forked tongue, and ejaculating the aforementioned hiss 
at the nose of a kitten, almost in contact with his lips. I 
ran into the hall for a hoe with a long handle, with which 
I intended to assail him, and returning in a few seconds 
missed him : he was gone, and I feared had escaped me. 
Still, however, the kitten sat watching immovably upon 
the same spot. I concluded, therefore, that, sliding be- 
tween the door and the threshold, he had found his way 
out of the garden into the yard. I went round immedi- 
ately, and there found him in close conversation with the 
old cat, whose curiosity being excited by so novel an ap- 
pearance, inclined her to pat his head repeatedly with her 
fore foot ; with her claws, however, sheathed, and not in 
anger, but in the way of philosophical inquiry and exami- 
nation. To prevent her falling a victim to so laudable an 
exercise of her talents, I interposed in a moment with the 
hoe, and performed an act of decapitation, which, though 
not immediately mortal, proved so in the end. Had he 
slid into the passages, where it is dark, or had he, when in 
the yard, met with no interruption from the cat, and se- 
creted himself in any of the outhouses, it is hardly possi- 
ble but that some of the family must have been bitten ; 
he might have been trodden upon without being per- 
ceived, and have slipped away before the sufferer could 
have well distinguished what foe had wounded him. 



104 COWPER. [chap. 

Three years ago we discovered one in the same place, 
which the barber slew with a trowel. 

" Our proposed removal to Mr. Small's was, as you sup- 
pose, a jest, or rather a joco-serious matter. We never 
looked upon it as entirely feasible, yet we saw in it some- 
thing so like practicability, that we did not esteem it alto- 
gether unworthy of our attention. It was one of those 
projects which people of lively imaginations play with, 
and admire for a few days, and then break in pieces. 
Lady Austen returned on Thursday from London, where 
she spent the last fortnight, and whither she was called by 
an unexpected opportunity to dispose of the remainder of 
her lease. She has now, therefore, no longer any connex- 
ion with the great city ; she has none on earth whom she 
calls friends but us, and no house but at Olney. Her 
abode is to be at the Vicarage, where she has hired as 
much room as she wants, which she will embellish with 
her own furniture, and which she will occupy, as soon as 
the minister's wife has produced another child, which is 
expected to make its entry in October. 

" Mr. Bull, a dissenting minister of Newport, a learned, 
ingenious, good-natured, pious friend of ours, who some- 
times visits us, and whom we visited last week, has put 
into my hands three volumes of French poetry, composed 
by Madame Guy on ; — a quietist, say you, and a fanatic ; I 
will have nothing to do with her. It is very well, you are 
welcome to have nothing to do with her, but in the mean- 
time her verse is the only French verse I ev^er read that I 
found agreeable ; there is a neatness in it equal to that 
which we applaud with so much reason in the composi- 
tions of Prior. I have translated several of them, and 
shall proceed in my translations till I have filled a Lillipu- 
tian paper-book I happen to have by me, which, when fill- 



VII.] THE LETTERS. 105 

ed, I shall present to Mr. Bull. He is her passionate ad- 
mirer, rode twenty miles to see her picture in the house of 
a stranger, which stranger politely insisted on his accept- 
ance of it, and it now hangs over his parlour chimney. It 
is a striking portrait, too characteristic not to be a strong 
resemblance, and were it encompassed with a glory, in- 
stead of being dressed in a nun's hood, might pass for the 
face of an angel. 

" Our meadows are covered with a winter-flood in Au- 
gust ; the rushes with which our bottomless chairs were 
to have been bottomed, and much hay, which was not car- 
ried, are gone down the river on a voyage to Ely, and it is 
even uncertain whether they will ever return. Sic transit 
gloria mundif 

" I am glad you have found a curate ; may he answer ! 
Am happy in Mrs. Bouverie's continued approbation ; it 
is worth while to write for such a reader. Yours, 

" W. C." 

The power of imparting interest to commonplace inci- 
dents is so great that we read with a sort of excitement a 
minute account of the conversion of an old card-table into 
a writing and dining table, with the causes and conse- 
quences of that momentous event; curiosity having been 
first cunningly aroused by the suggestion that the clerical 
friend to whom the letter is addressed might, if the mys- 
tery were not explained, be haunted by it when he was 
getting into his pulpit, at which time, as he had told Cow- 
per, perplexing questions were apt to come into his mind. 

A man who lived by himself could have little but him- 
self to write about. Yet in these letters there is hardly a 
touch of offensive egotism. Nor is there any querulous- 
ness, except that of religious despondency. From those 



106 COWPER. [chap. 

weaknesses Cowper was free. Of his proneness to self- 
revelation we have had a specimen already. 

The minor antiquities of the generations immediately 
preceding ours are becoming rare, as compared with those 
of remote ages, because nobody thinks it worth while to 
preserve them. It is almost as easy to get a personal 
memento of Priam or Nimrod as it is to get a harpsichord, 
a spinning-wheel, a tinder-box, or a scratch - back. An 
Egyptian wig is attainable, a wig of the Georgian era is 
hardly so, much less a tie of the Regency. So it is with 
the scenes of common life a century or two ago. They 
are being lost, because they were familiar. Here are two 
of them, however, which have limned themselves with the 
distinctness of the camera-obscura on the page of a chron- 
icler of trifles. 

To THE Rev. John Newton. 

"Nov. iVth, 1783. 
"My dear Friend, — The country around is much 
alarmed with apprehensions of fire. Two have happened 
since that of Olney. One at Hitchin, where the damage is 
said to amount to eleven thousand pounds; and another, 
at a place not far from Hitchin, of which I have not yet 
learnt the name. Letters have been dropped at Bedford, 
threatening to burn the town ; and the inhabitants have 
been so intimidated as to have placed a guard in many parts 
of it, several nights past. Since our conflagration here, we 
have sent two women and a boy to the justice for depre- 
dation ; S. R. for stealing a piece of beef, which, in her ex- 
cuse, she said she intended to take care of. This lady, 
whom you well remember, escaped for want of evidence ; 
not that evidence was wanting, but our men of Gotham 
judged it unnecessary to send it. With her went the 



vn.] THE LETTERS. 107 

woman I mentioned before, who, it seems, has made some 
sort of profession, but upon this occasion allowed herself a 
latitude of conduct rather inconsistent with it, having filled 
her apron with wearing-apparel, which she likewise intend- 
ed to take care of. She would have gone to the county 
gaol, had William Raban, the baker's son, who prosecuted, 
insisted upon it; but he, good-naturedly, though I think 
weakly, interposed in her favour, and begged her off. The 
young gentleman who accompanied these fair ones is the 
junior son of Molly Boswell. He had stolen some iron- 
work, the property of Griggs the butcher. Being convict- 
ed, he was ordered to be whipped, which operation he un- 
derwent at the cart's tail, from the stone-house to the high 
arch, and back again. He seemed to show great fortitude, 
but it was all an imposition upon the public. The beadle, 
who performed it, had filled his left hand with yellow 
ochre, through which, after every stroke, he drew the lash 
of his whip, leaving the appearance of a wound upon the 
skin, but in reality not hurting him at all. This being 
perceived by Mr. Constable H., who followed the beadle, 
he applied his cane, without any such management or pre- 
caution, to the shoulders of the too merciful executioner. 
The scene immediately became more interesting. The 
beadle could by no means be prevailed upon to strike 
hard, which provoked the constable to strike harder; and 
this double flogging continued, till a lass of Silver-End, 
pitying the pitiful beadle thus suffering under the hands of 
the pitiless constable, joined the procession, and placing 
herself immediately behind the latter, seized him by his 
capillary club, and pulling him backwards by the same, 
slapped his face with a most Amazon fury. This con- 
catenation of events has taken up more of my paper than 

I intended it should," but I could not forbear to inform you 
H 



108 , COWPER. [chap. 

how the beadle thrashed the thief, the constable the bea- 
dle, and the lady the constable, and how the thief was the 
only person concerned who suffered nothing. Mr. Teedon 
has been here, and is gone again. He came to thank me 
for some left-off clothes. In answer to our inquiries after 
his health, he replied that he had a slow fever, which made 
him take all possible care not to inflame his blood; I ad- 
mitted his prudence, but in his particular instance could 
not very clearly discern the need of it. Pump water will 
not heat him much ; and, to speak a little in his own style, 
more inebriating fluids are to him, I fancy, not very attain- 
able. He brought us news, the truth of which, however, 
I do not vouch for, that the town of Bedford was actually 
on fire yesterday, and the flames not extinguished when 
the bearer of the tidings left it. 

" Swift observes, when he is giving his reasons why the 
preacher is elevated always above his hearers, that, let the 
crowd be as great as it will below, there is always room 
enough overhead. If the French philosophers can carry 
their art of flying to the perfection they desire, the obser- 
vation may be reversed, the crowd will be overhead, and 
they will have most room who stay below. I can assure 
you, however, upon my own experience, that this way of 
travelling is very delightful. I dreamt a night or two 
since that I drove myself through the upper regions in a 
balloon and pair, with the greatest ease and security. Hav- 
ing finished the tour I intended, I made a short turn, 
and, with one flourish of my whip, descended ; my horses 
prancing and curvetting with an infinite share of spirit, 
but without the least danger, either to me or my vehicle. 
The time, we may suppose, is at hand, and seems to be 
prognosticated by my dream, when these airy excursions 
will be universal, when judges will fly the circuit, and 



VII.] THE LETTERS. 109 

bishops their visitations', and when the tour of Europe 
will be performed with much greater speed, and with equal 
advantage, by all who travel merely for the sake of having 
it to say that they have made it. 

"I beg you will accept for yourself and yours our un- 
feigned love, and remember me affectionately to Mr. Bacon, 
when you see him. Yours, my dear friend, 



To THE Rev. John Newton. 

" March 29th, 1784. 

"My DEA.R Friend, — It being his Majesty's pleasure 
that I should yet have another opportunity to write before 
he dissolves the Parliament, I avail myself of it with all 
possible alacrity. I thank you for your last, which wa* 
not the less welcome for coming, like an extraordinary 
gazette, at a time when it was not expected. 

" As when the sea is uncommonly agitated, the water 
finds its way into creeks and holes of rocks, which in its 
calmer state it never reaches, in like manner the effect of 
these turbulent times is felt even at Orchard Side, where, 
in general, we live as undisturbed by the political element 
as shrimps or cockles that have been accidentally deposited 
in some hollow beyond the water-mark, by the usual dash- 
ing of the waves. We were sitting yesterday after dinner, 
the two ladies and myself, very composedly, and without 
the least apprehension of any such intrusion in our snug 
parlour, one lady knitting, the other netting, and the gen- 
tleman winding worsted, when to our unspeakable surprise 
a mob appeared before the window ; a smart rap was 
heard at the door, the boys bellowed, and the maid an- 
nounced Mr. Grenville. Puss was unfortunately let out 
of her box, so that" the candidate, with all his good friends 



110 COWPER. [chap. 

at his heels, was refused admittance at the grand entry, 
and referred to the back door, as the only possible way of 
approach. 

"Candidates are creatures not very susceptible of af- 
fronts, and would rather, I suppose, climb in at the win- 
dow than be absolutely excluded. In a minute, the yard, 
the kitchen, and the parlour were filled. Mr. GrenvilJe, 
advancing toward me, shook me by the hand with a de- 
gree of cordiality that was extremely seducing. As soon 
as he, and as many more as could find chairs, were seated, 
he began to open the intent of his visit. I told him I had 
no vote, for which he readily gave me credit. I assured 
him I had no influence, which he was not equally inclined 
to believe, and the less, no doubt, because Mr. Ashburner, 
the draper, addressing himself to me at this moment, in- 
formed me that I had a great deal. Supposing that I 
could not be possessed of such a treasure without knowing 
it, I ventured to confirm my first assertion by saying, that 
if I had any I was utterly at a loss to imagine where it 
could be, or wherein it consisted. Thus ended the con- 
ference. Mr. Grenville squeezed me by the hand again, 
kissed the ladies, and withdrew. He kissed, likewise, the 
maid in the kitchen, and seemed, upon the whole, a most 
loving, kissing, kind-hearted gentleman. He is very young, 
genteel, and handsome. He has a pair of very good eyes 
in his head, which not being sufficient as it should seem 
for the many nice and difficult purposes of a senator, he 
has a third also, which he suspended from his buttonhole. 
The boys halloo'd ; the dogs barked ; puss scampered ; the 
hero, with his long train of obsequious followers, with- 
drew. We made ourselves very merry with the adventure, 
and in a short time settled into our former tranquillity, 
never probably to be thus interrupted more. I thought 



til] the letters. Ill 

myself, however, happy in being able to affirm truly that 
I had not that influence for which he sued ; and which, 
had I been possessed of it, with my present views of the 
dispute between the Crown and the Commons, I must 
have refused him, for he is on the side of the former. It 
is comfortable to be of no consequence in a world where 
one cannot exercise any without disobliging somebody. 
The town, however, seems to be much at his service, and 
if he be equally successful throughout the country, he will 
undoubtedly gain his election. Mr. Ashburner, perhaps, 
was a little mortified, because it was evident that I owed 
the honour of this visit to his misrepresentation of my im- 
portance. But had he thought proper to assure Mr. Gren- 
ville that I had three heads, I should not, I suppose, have 
been bound to produce them. 

" Mr. Scott, who you say was so much admired in your 
pulpit, would be equally admired in his own, at least by 
all capable judges, were he not so apt to be angry with his 
congregation. This hurt him, and had he the understand- 
ing and eloquence of Paul himself, would still hurt him. 
He seldom, hardly ever indeed, preaches a gentle, well-tem- 
pered sermon, but I hear it highly commended ; but warmth 
of temper, indulged to a degree that may be called scold- 
ing, defeats the end of preaching. It is a misapplication 
of his powers,"which it also cripples, and tears away his 
hearers. But he is a good man, and may perhaps out- 
grow it. 

" Many thanks for the worsted, which is excellent. We 
are as well as a spring hardly less severe than the severest 
winter will give us leave to be. With our united love, we 
conclude ourselves yours and Mrs. Newton's affectionate 
and faithful, W. C. 

" M. u;' 



112 COWPER. [chap. 

In 1789 the French Revolution, advancing with thunder- 
tread, makes even the hermit of Weston look up for a 
moment from his translation of Homer, though he little 
dreamed that he, with his gentle philanthropy and senti- 
mentalism, had anything to do with the great overturn of 
the social and political systems of the past. From time 
to time some crash of especial magnitude awakens a faint 
echo in the letters. • 

To Lady Hesketh. 

"July 'Zth, 1790. 

" Instead of beginning with the safiiron-vested mourning 
to which Homer invites me, on a morning that has no saf- 
fron vest to boast, I shall begin with you. It is irksome 
to us both to wait so long as we must for you, but we are 
willing to hope that by a longer stay you will make us 
amends for all this tedious procrastination. 

"Mrs. Unvvin has made known her whole case to Mr. 
Gregson, whose opinion of it has been very consolatory to 
me ; he says, indeed, it is a case perfectly out of the reach 
of all physical aid, but at the same time not at all danger- 
ous. Constant pain is a sad grievance, whatever part is 
affected, and she is hardly ever free from an aching head, 
as well as an uneasy side ; but patience is an anodyne of 
God's own preparation, and of that He gives her largely. 

" The French who, like all lively folks, are extreme in 
everything, are such in their zeal for freedom ; and if it 
were possible to make so noble a cause ridiculous, their 
manner of promoting it could not fail to do so. Princes 
and peers reduced to plain gentleman ship, and gentles re- 
duced to a level with their own lackeys, are excesses of 
which they will repent hereafter. Differences of rank and 
subordination are, I believe, of God's appointment, and 



VII.] THE LETTERS. II.3 

consequently essential to the well-being of society ; but 
what we mean by fanaticism in religion is exactly that 
which animates their politics; and, unless time should 
sober them, they will, after all, be an unhappy people. 
Perhaps it deserves not much to be wondered at, that at 
their first escape from tyrannic shackles they should act 
extravagantly, and treat their kings as they have some- 
times treated their idol. To these, however, they are 
reconciled in due time again, but their respect for mon- 
ai'chy is at an end. They want nothing now but a little 
English sobriety, and that they want extremely. I heart- 
ily wish them some wit in their anger, for it were great 
pity that so many millions should be miserable for want 
of it." 

This, it will be admitted, is very moderate and unapoca- 
lyptic. Presently Monarchical Europe takes arms against 
the Revolution. But there are two political observers at 
least who see that Monarchical Europe is making a mis- 
take — Kaunitz and Cowper. " The French," observes 
Cowper to Lady Hesketh in December, 1792, "are a vain 
and childish people, and conduct themselves on this grand 
occasion with a levity and extravagance nearly akin to mad- 
ness ; but it would have been better for Austria and Prus- 
sia to let them alone. All nations have a right to choose 
their own form of government, and the sovereignty of the 
people is a doctrine that evinces itself ; for, whenever the 
people choose to be masters, they always are so, and none 
can hinder them. God grant that we may have no revo- 
lution here, but unless we have reform, we certainly shall. 
Depend upon it, my dear, the hour has come when power 
founded on patronage and corrupt majorities must govern 
this land no longer. Concessions, too, must be made to 



114 COWPER. [chap. 

Dissenters of every denomination. They have a right to 
them — a right to all the privileges of Englishmen, and 
sooner or later, by fair means or by foul, they will have 
thein/' Even in 1793, though he expresses, as he well 
might, a cordial abhorrence of the doings of the French, 
he calls them not fiends, but " madcaps." He expresses 
the strongest indignation against the Tory mob which 
sacked Priestley's house at Birmingham, as he does, in 
justice be it said, against all manifestations of fanaticism. 
We cannot help sometimes wishing, as we read these pas- 
sages in the letters, that their calmness and reasonableness 
could have been communicated to another " Old Whig," 
who was setting the world on fire with his anti-revolution- 
ary rhetoric. 

It is true, as has already been said, that Cowper was 
" extramundane ;" and that his political reasonableness was 
in part the result of the fancy that he and his fellow-saints 
had nothing to do with the world but to keep themselves 
clear of it, and let it go its own way to destruction. But 
it must also be admitted that while the wealth of Estab- 
lishments of which Burke was the ardent defender, is nec- 
essarily reactionary in the highest degree, the tendency 
of religion itself, where it is genuine and sincere, must be 
to repress any selfish feeling about class or position, and 
to make men, in temporal matters, more willing to sacri- 
fice the present to the future, especially where the hope is 
held out of moral as well as of material improvement. 
Thus it has come to pass that men who professed and 
imagined themselves to have no interest in this world 
have practically been its great reformers and improvers in 
the political and material as well as in the moral sphere. 

The last specimen shall be one in the more sententious 
style, and one which proves that Cowper was capable of 



VII.] THE LETTERS. 115 

writing in a judicious manner on a difficult and delicate 
question — even a question so difficult and so delicate as 
that of the propriety of painting the face. 

To THE Rev. William Unwin. 

"May 3d, 1V84. 

" My dear Friend, — The subject of face painting may 
be considered, I think, in two points of view. First, there 
is room for dispute with respect to the consistency of the 
practice with good morals ; and, secondly, whether it be, on 
the whole, convenient or not, may be a matter worthy of 
agitation. I set out with all the formality of logical dis- 
quisition, but do not promise to observe the same regulari- 
ty any further than it may comport with my purpose of 
writing as fast as I can. 

"As to the immorality of the custom, were I in France, 
I should see none. On the contrary, it seems in that 
country to be a symptom of modest consciousness, and a 
tacit confession of what all know to be true, that French 
faces have, in fact, neither red nor white of their own. 
This humble acknowledgment of a defect looks the more 
like a virtue, being found among a people not remarkable 
for humility. Again, before we can prove the practice to 
be immoral, we must prove immorality in the design of 
those who use it; either that they intend a deception, 
or to kindle unlawful desires in the beholders. But the 
French ladies, so far as their purpose comes in question, 
must be acquitted of both these charges. Nobody sup- 
poses their colour to be natural for a moment, any more 
than he would if it were blue or green ; and this unam- 
biguous judgment of the matter is owing to two causes: 
first, to the universal knowledge we have, that French 
women are naturally either brown or yellow, with very few 
6 



il6 COWPEK. [chap. 

exceptions; and secondly, to the inartificial manner in 
which they paint; for they do not, as I am most satisfac- 
torily informed, even attempt an imitation of nature, but 
besmear themselves hastily, and at a venture, anxious only 
to lay on enough. Where, therefore, there is no wanton 
intention, nor a wish to deceive, I can discover no immo- 
rality. But in England, I am afraid, our painted ladies are 
not clearly entitled to the same apology. They even imi- 
tate nature with such exactness that the whole public is 
sometimes divided into parties, who litigate with great 
warmth the question whether painted or not ? This was 
remarkably the case with a Miss B , whom I well re- 
member. Her roses and lilies were never discovered to 
be spurious till she attained an age that made the suppo- 
sition of their being natural impossible. This anxiety to 
be not merely red and white, which is all they aim at in 
France, but to be thought very beautiful, and much more 
beautiful than Nature has made them, is a symptom not 
very favourable to the idea we would wish to entertain of 
the chastity, purity, and modesty of our countrywomen. 
That they are guilty of a design to deceive, is certain. 
Otherwise why so much art ? and if to deceive, wherefore 
and with what purpose? Certainly either to gratify van- 
ity of the silliest kind, or, which is still more criminal, to 
decoy and inveigle, and carry on more successfully the 
business of temptation. Here, therefore, my opinion splits 
itself into two opposite sides upon the same question. I 
can suppose a French woman, though painted an inch 
deep, to be a virtuous, discreet, excellent character ; and in 
no instance should I think the worse of one because she 
was painted. But an English belle must pardon me if I 
have not the same charity for her. She is at least an im- 
postor, whether she cheats me or not, because she means 



VII.] THE LETTERS. il^ 

to do so ; and it is well if that be all the censure she de- 
serves. 

" This brings me to my second class of ideas npon this 
topic ; and here I feel that I should be fearfully puzzled 
were I called upon to recommend the practice on the score 
of convenience. If a husband chose that his wife should 
paint, perhaps it might be her duty, as well as her interest, 
to comply. But I think he would not much consult his 
own, for reasons that will follow. In the first place, she 
would admire herself the more ; and in the next, if she 
managed the matter well, she might be more admired by 
others; an acquisition that might bring her virtue under 
trials, to which otherwise it might never have been ex- 
posed. In no other case, however, can I imagine the prac- 
tice in this country to be either expedient or convenient. 
As a general one it certainly is not expedient, because, in 
general, English women have no occasion for it. A 
swarthy complexion is a rarity here ; and the sex, especial- 
ly since inoculation has been so much in use, have very 
little cause to complain that nature has not been kind to 
them in the article of complexion. They may hide and 
spoil a good one, but they cannot, at least they hardly can, 
give themselves a better. But even if they could, there 
is yet a tragedy in the sequel which should make them 
tremble. 

" I understand that in France, though the use of rouge 
be general, the use of white paint is far from being so. 
In England, she that uses one commonly uses both. Now, 
all white paints, or lotions, or whatever they may be called, 
are mercurial ; consequently poisonous, consequently ruin- 
ous, in time, to the constitution. The Miss B above 

mentioned was a miserable witness of this truth, it being 
certain that her flesh fell from her bones before she died. 



118 COWPER. [chap. VII. 

Lady Coventry was hardly a less melancholy proof of it; 
and a London physician, perhaps, were he at liberty to 
blab, could publish a bill of female mortality, of a length 
that would astonish us. 

" For these reasons I utterly condemn the practice, as it 
obtains in England ; and for a reason superior to all these, 
I must disapprove it. I cannot, indeed, discover that 
Scripture forbids it in so many words. But that anxious 
solicitude about the person, which such an artifice evident- 
ly betrays, is, I am sure, contrary to the tenor and spirit 
of it throughout. Show me a woman with a painted face, 
and I will show you a woman whose heart is set on things 
of the earth, and not on things above. 

"But this observation of mine applies to it only when 
it is an imitative art. For, in the use of French women, I 
think it is as innocent as in the use of a wild Indian, who 
draws a circle round her face, and makes two spots, per- 
haps blue, perhaps white, in the middle of it. Such are 
my thoughts upon the matter. 

" Vive valeque. 

"Yours ever, 

"W.C." 

These letters have been chosen as illustrations of Cow- 
per's epistolary style, and for that purpose they have been 
given entire. But they are also the best pictures of his 
character; and his character is everything. The events 
of his life worthy of record might all be comprised in a 
dozen pages. 



^ CHAPTER VIII. 

CLOSE OF LIFE. 

CowPER says there could not have been a happier trio on 
earth than Lady Hesketh, Mrs. Unwin, and himself. Nev- 
ertheless, after his removal to Weston, he again went mad, 
and once more attempted self-destruction. His malady 
was constitutional, and it settled down upon him as his 
years increased, and his strength failed. He was now 
sixty. The Olney physicians, instead of husbanding his 
vital power, had wasted it away secundum artem by purg- 
ing, bleeding, and emetics. He had overworked himself 
on his fatal translation of Homer, under the burden of 
which he moved, as he says himself, like an ass overladen 
with sand-bags. He had been getting up to work at six, 
and not breakfasting till eleven. And now the life from 
which his had for so many years been fed, itself began to 
fail. Mrs. Unwin was stricken with paralysis ; the stroke 
was slight, but of its nature there was no doubt. Her 
days of bodily life were numbered ; of mental life there 
remained to her a still shorter span. Her excellent son, 
William Unwin, had died of a fever soon after the re- 
moval of the pair to Weston. He had been engaged in 
the work of his profession as a clergyman, and we do not 
hear of his being often at Olney. But he was in constant 
correspondence with Cowper, in whose heart as well as in 
that of Mrs. Unwin, his death must have left a great void, 



120 COWPER. [chap. 

and his support was withdrawn just at the moment when 
it was about to become most necessary. 

Happily, just at this juncture a new and a good friend 
appeared. Hayley was a mediocre poet, who had for a 
time obtained distinction above his merits. Afterwards 
his star had declined, but having an excellent heart, he 
had not been in the least soured by the downfall of his 
reputation. He was addicted to a pompous rotundity of 
style ; perhaps he was rather absurd ; but he was thor- 
oughly good-natured, very anxious to make himself use- 
ful, and devoted to Cowper, to whom, as a poet, he looked 
up with an admiration unalloyed by any other feeling. 
Both of them, as it happened, were engaged on Milton, 
and an attempt had been made to set them by the ears ; 
but Hayley took advantage of it to introduce himself to 
Cowper with an effusion of the warmest esteem. He was 
at Weston when Mrs. Unwin was attacked with paralysis, 
and displayed his resource by trying to cure her with an 
electric-machine. At Eartham, on the coast of Sussex, he 
had, by an expenditure beyond his means, made for him- 
self a little paradise, where it was his delight to gather a 
distinguished circle. To this place he gave the pair a 
pressing invitation, which was accepted in the vain hope 
that a change might do Mrs. Unwin good. 

From Weston to Eartham was a three days' journey, an 
enterprise not undertaken without much trepidation and 
earnest prayer. It was safely accomplished, however, the 
enthusiastic Mr. Rose walking to meet his poet and philos- 
opher on the w^ay. Hayley had tried to get Thurlow to 
meet Cowper. A sojourn in a country house with the 
tremendous Thurlow, the only talker for whom Johnson 
condescended to prepare himself, would have been rather 
an overpowering pleasure ; and perhaps, after all, it was as 



Yin.] CLOSE OF LIFE. 121 

well that Hayley could only get Cowper's disciple, Hurdis, 
afterwards professor of poetry at Oxford, and Charlotte 
Smith. 

At Eartham, Cowper's portrait was painted by Romney. 

"Romuey, expert iufallibly to trace 
On chart or canvas not the form alone 
And semblance, but, however faintly shown 
The mind's impression too on every face, 
"With strokes that time ought never to erase, 
Thou hast so pencilled mine that though I own 
The subject worthless, I have never known 
The artist shining with superior grace ; 
But this I mark, that symptoms none of woe 
In thy incomparable work api)ear : 
Well : I am satisfied it should be so. 
Since on maturer thought the cause is clear ; 
For in my looks what sorrow could'st thou see 
When I was Hayley's guest and sat to thee." 

Southey observes that it was likely enough there would 
be no melancholy in the portrait, but that Hayley and 
Romney fell into a singular error in mistaking for "the 
light of genius " what Leigh Hunt calls " a fire fiercer than 
that either of intellect or fancy, gleaming from the raised 
and protruded eye." 

Hayley evidently did his utmost to make his guest hap- 
py. They spent the hours in literary chat, and compared 
notes about Milton. The first days were days of enjoy- 
ment. But soon the recluse began to long for his nook 
at Weston. Even the extensiveness of the view at Ear- 
tham made his mind ache, and increased his melancholy. 
To Weston the pair returned ; the paralytic, of course, 
none the better for her journey. Her mind as well as her 



122 COWPER. [chap. 

body was now rapidly giving way. We quote as biogTa- 
phy that which is too well known to be quoted as poetry. 

TO MARY. 

The twentieth year is well-nigh past 
Since first our sky Avas overcast : — 
Ah, would that this might be the last! 

My Mary! 

Thy spirits have a fainter flow, 

I see thee daily weaker grow : — 

'Twas my distress that brought thee low. 

My Mary ! 

Thy needles, once a shining store. 
For my sake restless heretofore, 
Now rust disused, and shine no more. 

My Mary ! 

For though thou gladly wouldst fulfil 
The same kind office for me still. 
Thy sight now seconds not thy will, 

My Mary ! 

But well thou play'dst the housewife's part. 
And all thy threads with magic art, 
Have wound themselves- about this heart. 

My Mary ! 

Thy indistinct expressions seem 

Like language utter'd in a dream : 

Yet me they charm, whate'er the theme. 

My Mary ! 

Thy silver locks, once auburn bright, 
Are still more lovely in my sight 
Thau golden beams of orient light, 

My Mary ! 



na.] CLOSE OF LIFE. ^ 123 

For could I view nor them nor thee, 
What sight worth seeing could I see ? 
The sun would rise in vain for me, 

My Mary ! 

Partakers of thy sad decline. 

Thy hands their little force resign ; 

Yet gently press'd, press gently mine, 

My Mary ! 

Such feebleness of limbs thou provest, 
That now at every step thou movest. 
Upheld by two ; yet still thou lovest. 

My Mary ! 

And still to love, though press'd with ill, 
In wintry age to feel no chill, 
With me is to be lovely still, 

My Mary I 

But ah ! by constant heed I know. 
How oft the sadness that I show 
Transforms thy smiles to looks of woe, 

My Mary ! 

And should my future lot be cast 
With much resemblance of the past, 
Thy worn-out heart will break at last, 

My Mary ! 

Even love, at least the power of manifesting love, began 
to betray its mortality. She who had been so devoted, 
became, as her mind failed, exacting, and instead of sup- 
porting her partner, drew him down. He sank again into 
the depth of hypochondria. As usual, his malady took 
the form of religious horrors, and he fancied that he was 
ordained to undergo severe penance for his sins. Six days 
he sat motionless and silent, almost refusing to take food. 
I 6* 



124 COWPER. [chap. 

His physician suggested, as the only chance of arousing 
him, that Mrs. Unwin should be induced, if possible, to in- 
vite him to go out with her; with difficulty she was made^ 
to understand what they wanted her to do ; at last she 
said that it was a fine morning, and she should like a walk. 
Her partner at once rose and placed .her arm in his. Al- 
most unconsciously, she had rescued him from the evil 
spirit for the last time. The pair were in doleful plight. 
When their minds failed they had fallen in a miserable 
manner under the influence of a man named Teedon, a 
schoolmaster crazed with self-conceit, at whom Cowper in 
his saner mood had laughed, but whom he now treated as 
a spiritual oracle, and a sort of medium of communication 
with the spirit-world, writing down the nonsense which the 
charlatan talked. Mrs. Unwin, being no longer in a con- 
dition to control the expenditure, the housekeeping, of 
course, went wrong ; and at the same time her partner lost 
the protection of the love-inspired tact by which she had 
always contrived to shield his weakness and to secure for 
him, in spite of his eccentricities, respectful treatment 
from his neighbours. Lady Hesketh's health had failed, 
and she had been obliged to go to Bath. Hayley now 
proved himself no mere lion-hunter, but a true friend. In 
conjunction with Cowper's relatives, he managed the re- 
moval of the pair from Weston to Mundsley, on the coast 
of Norfolk, where Cowper seemed to be soothed by the 
sound of the sea; then to Dunham Lodge, near Swaffham; 
and finally (in 1796) to East Dereham, where, two months 
after their arrival, Mrs. Unwin died. Her partner was 
barely conscious of his loss. On the morning of her death 
he asked the servant "whether there was life above stairs?" 
On being taken to see the corpse, he gazed at it for a mo- 
ment, uttered one passionate cry of grief, and never spoke 



VIII.] CLOSE OF LIFE. 125 

of Mrs. Unwin more. He had the misfortune to survive 
her three years and a half, during which relatives and 
friends were kind, and Miss Perowne partly filled the place 
of Mrs. Unwin. Now and then there was a gleam of rea- 
son and faint revival of literary faculty; but composition 
was confined to Latin verse or translation, with one 
memorable and almost awful exception. The last origi- 
nal poem written by Cowper was The Castaway, founded 
on aH incident in Anson's Voyage. 

" Obscurest night involved the sky, 

The Atlantic billows roared, 
When such a destined wretch as I, 

Wash'd headlong from on board, 
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft, 
His floating home forever left. 

" No braver chief could Albion boast 

Than he with whom he went, 
Nor ever ship left Albion's coast 

With warmer wishes sient. 
He loved them both, but both in vaiu ; 
Nor him beheld, nor her agaiu. 

"Not long beneath the whelming brine, 
Expert to swim, he lay ; 
Nor soon he felt his strength decline. 

Or courage die away ; 
But waged with death a lasting strife. 
Supported by despair of life. 

" He shouted ; nor his friends had fail'd 

To check the vessel's course. 
But so the furious blast prevail'd 

That pitiless perforce 
They left their outcast mate behind, 
And scudded still before the wind. 



126 COWPER. [chap. 

" Some succour yet they could aflford ; 

And, such as storms allow, 
The cask, the coop, the floated cord, 

Delay'd not to bestow : 
But he, thej^ knew, nor ship nor shore, 
Whate'er they gave, should visit more. 

" Nor, cruel as it seem'd, could he 

Their haste himself condemn, 
Aware that flight in such a sea 

Alone could rescue them ; 
Yet bitter felt it still to die 
Deserted, and his friends so nigh. 

'^ He long survives, who lives an hour 

In ocean, self-upheld ; 
And so long he, with unspent power, 

His destiny repelled : 
And ever, as the minutes flew, 
Entreated help, or cried — ' Adieu !' 

"At length, his transient respite past, 

His comrades, who before 
Had heard his voice in every blast, 

Could catch the sound no more : 
For then, by toil subdued, he drank 
The stifling wave, and then he sank. 

" No poet wept him ; but the page 

Of narrative sincere. 
That tells his name, his worth, his age, 

Is wet with Anson's tear : 
And tears by bards or heroes shed 
Alike immortalize the dead. 

" I therefore purpose not, or dream, 
Descanting on his fate. 



viiL] • CLOSE OF LIFE. 127 

To give the melancholy theme 

A more euduriug date : 
But misery still delights to trace 
Its semblance iu another's case. 



"No voice divine the storm allay'd, 
No light propitious shone, 
When, snatch'd from all effectual aid. 

We perish'd, each alone : 
But I beneath a rougher sea^ 
And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than heJ 



The despair which finds vent in verse is hardly despair. 
Poetry can never be the direct expression of emotion ; it 
must be the product of reflection combined with an exer- 
cise of the faculty of composition which in itself is pleas- 
ant. Still, The Castaway ought to be an antidote to relig' 
ious depression, since it is the work of a man of whom it 
would be absurdity to think as really estranged from the 
spirit of good, who had himself done good to the utmost 
of his powers. 

Cowper died very peacefully on the morning of April 
25, 1800, and was buried in Dereham Church, where there 
is a monument to him with an inscription by Hayley, 
which, if it is not good poetry, is a tribute of sincere 
affection. 

Any one whose lot it is to write upon the life and 
works of Cowper must feel that there is an immense dif- 
ference between the interest which attaches to him, and 
that which attaches to any one among the far greater 
poets of the succeeding age. Still, there is something 
about him so attractive, his voice has such a silver tone, 
he retains, even in his ashes, such a faculty of winning 
friends, that his biographer and critic may be easily be- 



128 COWPER. [chap. viii. 

guiled into giving him too high a place. He belongs to 
a particular religious movement, with the vitality of which 
the interest of a great part of his works has departed or 
is departing. Still more emphatically and in a still more 
important sense does he belong to Christianity. In no 
natural struggle for existence would he have been the sur- 
vivor ; by no natural process of selection would he ever 
have been picked out as a vessel of honour. If the shield 
which for eighteen centuries Christ, by His teaching and 
His death, has spread over the weak things of this world, 
should fail, and might should again become the title to 
existence and the measure of worth, Cowpcr will be cast 
aside as a specimen of despicable infirmity, and all who 
have said anything in his praise will be treated with the 
same scorn. 



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